Skipper and Co

A strange sight this morning. A brown skipper butterfly landed on what appeared to be a bird dropping and was feeding. This in itself is not that unusual. As much as we would like to deny that these beautiful creatures have such objectionable habits, it is a fact that butterflies eat shit, so live with it.

What was strange, was that every 20 seconds or so, the butterfly would curl its abdomen round and spray onto the dropping actually where it was feeding. Even stranger, a small fly came along and joined in.

If you zoom in (ctrl+++), you will see the fly has a very distended abdomen. Unfortunately, I could not get close for a good macro, otherwise I would have blipped the fly. Nothing gets wasted in nature, all those valuable nutrients get sucked up before they are washed away.

Note: ctrl--- to reverse the zoom.

Dave