Butterflies and a hummingbird moth at Mt. Airy Forest...

I visited Mt. Airy Forest in Cincinnati last week. It's the first time I've been there since I was a kid. It's a lovely park with a beautiful arboretum. I started my visit at the treehouse and then headed over to the arboretum. Butterflies were everywhere, and a Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird moth made an appearance too...

A Cabbage White butterfly (Pieris rapae) sips nectar in the midday sun at the Mt. Airy Forest arboretum.

From a distance, Cabbage Whites may appear a bit dull, but up close they have beautiful wings decorated in subtle shades of yellow on white. Their eyes sparkle in soft tones of turquoise and green. The dark spots on their wings make it easy to identify them. Cabbage Whites are one of our most recognizable and common butterflies. You can find them just about anywhere, and they fly both early and late in the season. Introduced from Europe around 1860, they have spread to most of North America. Because of their long flying season and their preference of cultivated garden plants (i.e., cabbages, mustards, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and radishes) as their host plants, they are often considered garden pests. (Source: "Butterflies of Ohio," by Jaret C. Daniels.)

A Cabbage White Butterfly takes flight. 
Although Cabbage Whites are slower moving than other butterflies, they still take to the wing at the wrong time when being photographed... 

A Cabbage White butterfly uses its proboscis to sip nectar.  

Recent studies at Clemson University in South Carolina show that a butterfly's proboscis is a "marvel of microfluidic design." Students and scientists there are studying the butterfly's feeding tube to learn more about micro-fluidity (the precise management of small amounts of fluid). They hope to create a microfluidic device to improve designs in products ranging from inkjet printers to "lab-on-a-chip" medical technologies. Previously, science assumed the proboscis worked like a drinking straw, but researchers at Clemson have found proboscis functionality is much more complex, and that the proboscis has "structures and properties that combine sponge-like capillary action with straw-like sucking." (Source: the Clemson University web site, here.)

Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth (Hemaris diffnis) at Mt. Airy Forest.

In our area there are two types of hummingbird moths. This fellow is a Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth (Hemaris diffinis). The other type is a Hummingbird Clearwing Moth (Hemaris thysbe). The two look a lot a like, but Snowberries are smaller and have a yellow face with a black mask. (Click here for an older post with photos of both types of hummingbird moths.)

The Natural Treasures of Ohio!

Mt. Airy Forest is one of the sites in the The Nature Conservancy's Natural Treasures of Ohio sweepstakes. If you go to Mt. Airy Forest, snap a photo of yourself at the super cool Everybody's Treehouse and submit it to enter to win a Honda Insight Hybrid (you have until August 8, 2012). Click here for more information.