Glasswing butterfly

I’ve never even heard of the Glasswing butterfly, I thought i was looking at a picture of some arts and craftsy sculpture. Nope, those are real butterflies. They get to be about two and a half inches across and are mostly South and Central American, though they get as far north as Texas. The glasswing dudes lek, that is they get together in some forest opening in gnarly lepidopterous groups to out macho each other because that’s what turns on the glasswing dolls. It’s not like rutting elk charging each other, unfortunately, no fluttering menacingly at other males, but more about displaying their gnarliness, Muscle Beach butterfly style. I’m sure there’s a David Attenborough bit about it somewhere. But they sure are weirdly gorgeous, ain’t they though?

Painted ladies

Dusk is nigh and the vast diurnal herds of butterflies have bedded down for the night, a billion butterflies clinging to the undersides of a billion leaves, and just in time too, as bats by the millions are stirring in their bat houses and oh what a bat butterfly massacre that would be, fading light and frantic fluttering and no sound at all.