{"id":14586,"date":"2014-04-21T21:33:37","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T02:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=14586"},"modified":"2014-04-21T21:33:37","modified_gmt":"2014-04-22T02:33:37","slug":"spring-azure-butterfly-at-grassi-bog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=14586","title":{"rendered":"Spring Azure Butterfly at Grassi Bog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-spring-azure-000-960.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14588\" title=\"post spring azure 000 480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-spring-azure-000-480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"391\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-spring-azure-000-480.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-spring-azure-000-480-300x244.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><strong>Spring Azure Butterfly (Celastrina ladon) at Mass. SouthCoast Bog<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Mid-afternoon today, April 21st, as we completed our survey of Grassi Bog on Massachusetts SouthCoast, Turtle Journal&#8217;s Sue Wieber Nourse spotted a small, bluish butterfly flittering near the wetlands edge. \u00c2\u00a0Yes, we are turtle researchers, herpetologists or perhaps even turtlologists. \u00c2\u00a0But when you spend your life in the field, you make all sorts of discoveries that are not limited by arbitrary boundaries and definitions. \u00c2\u00a0The bounds of Turtle Journal&#8217;s interest encompass the entire scope of Nature. \u00c2\u00a0So, yes; we were quite taken by this beautiful and delicate little creature. \u00c2\u00a0(Click on images for enlargement.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-post-spring-azure-0000-cropped-960.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14613\" title=\"post post spring azure 0000 cropped 480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-post-spring-azure-0000-cropped-480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"412\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-post-spring-azure-0000-cropped-480.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-post-spring-azure-0000-cropped-480-300x257.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><strong>Spring Azure Butterfly (Celastrina ladon)<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We snapped pictures of the butterfly as it alit on Don Lewis&#8217; finger with our Pentax Optio W60 underwater camera with a special 1 cm macro lens. \u00c2\u00a0With all the expensive cameras that Turtle Journal lugs around to capture the world of Nature, nothing has served us better for detailed closeup field photography.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-spring-azure-005-758.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14592\" title=\"post spring azure 005 480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-spring-azure-005-480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"707\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-spring-azure-005-480.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-spring-azure-005-480-203x300.jpg 203w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><strong>Spring Azure Butterfly (Celastrina ladon)<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Checking reference books on our return to Turtle Journal headquarters, we identified the critter as a Spring Azure Butterfly (<em>Celastrina\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><em>laden<\/em>). According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.butterfliesandmoths.org\/species\/Celastrina-ladon\" target=\"_blank\">Butterflies and Moths of North America<\/a>, the upper side of males are blue. \u00c2\u00a0Males are most active from mid-afternoon until dusk, the period when we found this specimen.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-spring-azure-100-cropped-960.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14594\" title=\"post spring azure 100 cropped 480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-spring-azure-100-cropped-480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"488\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-spring-azure-100-cropped-480.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/post-spring-azure-100-cropped-480-295x300.jpg 295w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><strong>Spring Azure Butterfly (Celastrina ladon)<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The habitat for the Spring Azure Butterfly is described as &#8220;openings and edges of deciduous woods, old fields, wooded freshwater marshes and swamps;&#8221; a perfect description of the long abandoned and flooded Grassi Bog. \u00c2\u00a0Now that we have met this delicate butterfly, the Turtle Journal team will keep a sharp eye out for more specimens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spring Azure Butterfly (Celastrina ladon) at Mass. SouthCoast Bog Mid-afternoon today, April 21st, as we completed our survey of Grassi Bog on Massachusetts SouthCoast, Turtle Journal&#8217;s Sue Wieber Nourse spotted a small, bluish butterfly flittering near the wetlands edge. \u00c2\u00a0Yes, we are turtle researchers, herpetologists or perhaps even turtlologists. \u00c2\u00a0But when you spend your life [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[402,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14586"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14586"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14620,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14586\/revisions\/14620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}