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WTF No. 8: Gossamer and Metal

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WTFs

WTF No. 8: Gossamer and Metal

Tiny butterflies and immense joy on the wing.

Bryan Pfeiffer
Mar 7
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WTF No. 8: Gossamer and Metal

chasingnature.substack.com

AS YOU WALK the pine flatwoods of the American Southeast, searching for the showy and charismatic, for the Bald Eagle or the Gopher Tortoise, for the Bobcat or Sandhill Laurel, you might easily overlook the tiny and charismatic — and the flame flickering in the understory at your ankles.

Even if the flame catches your eye as it visits a flower, you might pass it off as some sort of moth because, after all, no butterfly can have a wingspan measuring the width of your thumbnail. Or can it? And when you drop to you knees for a closer look, your world is renewed and expanded in the presence of a butterfly called Little Metalmark (Calephelis virginiensis).

Metalmarks are true to their name: a family of butterflies (Riodinidae), mostly orange here in North America but more wildly colored in the tropics, adorned in strands or flecks of silver, gold, aqua, red, purple or metallic hues you’ve never seen in nature. It’s as if a butterfly wasn’t already beautiful enough that it must also be graced in jewels.

Not only that, unlike most butterflies, metalmarks tend to perch on leaves or flowers or twigs and stay put for a very long time, often for as long as you care to look. It is one of nature’s infinite guilty pleasures.

There are certainly metalmarks more colorful than Little Metalmark. But I myself am not presently among those metalmarks. I am among Little Metalmarks. And among Little Metalmarks I need little else than the mile of pleasure I receive from a half-inch butterfly.

Underside ain’t half-bad either.

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WTFs are Wild Things Flying, Fornicating, Feeding, Flirting, Faking, Flowering or Flashing — a provocative or evocative image (or images) and relevant thoughts about the world every now and then here on Chasing Nature. This one is a Wild Thing Flying and Flickering.

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WTF No. 8: Gossamer and Metal

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15 Comments
Ginny
Mar 8Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

I’ve found, after these many years of living, that I need Beauty just as much as I need air. Thank you, Bryan, for being Its very source today.

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1 reply by Bryan Pfeiffer
Jason Anthony
Writes Field Guide to the Anthropocene
Mar 7Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

Lovely writing, as always, Brian. Coincidentally enough, we have an indoor visitor revealing itself today in our house here in coastal Maine: a clouded sulphur fluttering at the window, thinking it wants to frolic amid the freezing temps and foot of snow. Any thoughts on how to make its indoor life habitable? Or perhaps we should send it on its untimely way?

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