Tattered Red Admiral

Here's a Red Admiral butterfly that looks like it could win a tattered wing contest.

I'd like to think the butterfly has some harrowing and exciting stories to tell like in the scar comparisons in Jaws:

  1. This tear here, I got that shortly after pupating. A starling got the end of my right wing in its beak. I'd have been a goner, but when the starling was focused on me, that hawk came down on the starling.
  2. I lost part of my left rear wing when that praying mantis grabbed at me. If he'd have gotten my abdomen instead of my wing, I wouldn't be talking to you here today.
  3. The rest of that wing I lost in the web of a spider. If it hadn't been torn already, I'd never have been able to escape that web before that spider got to me.
  4. That one there, a robberfly had me for a second, but let go when that starling appeared and ate the robberfly. Funny how sometimes a starling saves you and sometimes tries to eat you.
  5. And this one got ripped when a dragonfly tried to eat me. I only got away because we were in the territory of a second rival dragonfly that attacked the first one. I escaped as they battled each other.

Unfortunately when I've asked lepidopterists about tattered butterfly wings, they've proposed more prosaic, even clumsy explanations, like the butterfly was bumbling around too close to Honey Locust or Multiflora Rose thorns.

July 31, 2021 at Duke Farms
Photo 149015703, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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