Swallowtail butterfly dog flight

This is one of those butterflies that I have had great difficulty getting shots of. I have only managed to capture images twice before in a year of trying and both times were this month during the spider week and the oddities week and so could not be blipped.

Today I saw a pair dancing around, I didn't even have time to mess with the ISO, I just swiveled around and fired off a single shot. I didn't even bother checking preview to see if I had caught anything, assuming that even if I had, it would be a blurry mess. So, imagine my surprise when processing to find this image, to be honest, I had forgotten all about the shot. Not only did I get two of them, I caught them in flight!

The static shots were very disappointing, even though I got in close. In fact, I was too close, with my back pressed against a tree, but that is where I had to be to have any chance of getting both wings in focus. I did take a few oblique angle shots, but you always lose wing focus due to depth of field.

I say disappointing because the subtle green of the large stripe was washed out to white. I remembered having this problem previously, so I even under exposed a few clicks on some shots, still the green was lost. Amazingly, the 'in flight' shot, above, captured the color perfectly. What a shot to round off the month with.

Dave