Deb, this is the way your butterfly should look.  It is a called Question Mark because on the underside of the wings is a little mark that looks like .... You guessed it a question mark.  The book I have shows a butterfly with pieces of it's wing missing.  If it is a v-shaped tear out of the wing it most likely a bird attempting to get lunch.  Yours doesn't look v-shaped so it could have been another animal or a near miss with a car.  We will never know.  We will just have to live with mysteries of life.

what happened here?

Found this butterfly before the last meeting. Actually I thought the leaf was diseased, but after zooming in I found different. I have never seen a butterfly this beat up before...is this normal?

Open House

I didn't take a photo of the booth we had at the park yesterday so you will have to read it instead of just looking at the pictures. I want to thank everyone that donated things to sell.  I was only there in the afternoon and we didn't have much action at the booth but I haven't had such a relaxing and enjoyable afternoon in a long, long time.

A few of us sat in the shade, drinking iced beverages and discussing many topics.  John Anderson was able to give some insight into how other clubs operate.  We also covered the topic of histograms, birds, cameras, deer, hunting and many more.  A good time was had by all.

Thanks again to everyone the helped with the Open House event.

Geri

Venus Transit

I might have taken the "Big Sky" challenge a little too far.  This was shot June 5th, of the transit of Venus across the face of the sun.  The largest dot is Venus (top right).  The other specks are sunspots.  I shot the image with my 500mm with a 1.4X teleconverter.  A welding filter was used to protect the camera and my eyes.   - John Anderson