An Orange Invasion

The purple plum trees that line our neighborhood streets are blooming now. And they are positively quivering with activity. Butterflies swarm in the flowers, swirl about the branches and make dancing shadows up and down the sidewalks. The trees are infested with orange butterflies.

They are fast and my camera skills are slow. So I could not capture the wild activity around each tree. I did get one little butterfly as it zipped by, so here he is, a bit of orange against all that pink.

I don't remember seeing this kind of infestation in prior springs. Butterflies are everywhere this year, you can't miss the swarms of them in the trees.

They are viceroy butterflies. They resemble monarchs with their orange and black colors, but the viceroys are smaller and a little browner-orange, not as bright as monarchs. And to me they seem zippier -- monarchs flit and float, but these little viceroys zoom about rapidly.

Viceroy caterpillars eat willow and cottonwood leaves, but they apparently lay eggs in trees like plums, apples and cherries. They must be just laying now, furiously, all at once on our plum trees, so when the caterpillars emerge later there will be green cottonwood leaves to eat nearby.

I just don't recall seeing so many before. It's quite a sight.