They’re back, too.

Monarch butterfly on rain-lily; click for greater detail.

The last time I said “They’re back,” I meant the many grackles massing on power lines in my neighborhood at sundown each day. Now I mean monarch butterflies, Danaus plexippus, though so far this autumn I’ve noticed only a few of them. In other years I’ve watched them in large numbers gathering nectar from goldenrod and Maximilian sunflowers, but the one in today’s photograph is the first I can recall seeing attracted to rain-lilies, Cooperia drummondii, which far outnumbered butterflies in Austin a couple of weeks ago.

© 2011 Steven Schwartzman