I took this photo as I was coming down from the summit of Emory Peak in Big Bend National Park. I took a lot of macro photos on this day because I had rented a 100mm lens from Lensrentals.com for my Canon 7D. With its f-stop of 2.8, I could snap photos with a very narrow range of focus. The image stabilization also allowed for tack sharp photos, which is extremely important when taking detailed macro shots. Typically, I love the bokeh, or blurred, effect that can be created by using such a low f-stop, but on this photo, there were quite a few items in the narrow range of focus. You can see that the full body of the black swallowtail butterfly was in focus. The yellow flowers that it was feeding on also were in the range of the lens. This makes for a more complete photo than just a portrait of a butterfly. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

The black swallowtail is one of the most common swallowtail butterflies. It is found throughout southern Canada, most of the eastern and mid-western United States west to the Rocky Mountains, and southwest into Arizona and northern Mexico. It is commonly found in open areas such as wet prairies, fields, flat woods, pine savannas, roadsides, weedy areas, and gardens. They primarily will feed on herbs in the carrot family. This includes, and is not exclusive to poison hemlock, Queen Anne’s lace, wild parsnip, spotted water hemlock, mock bishopweed, caraway, celery, dill, parsley, and sweet fennel. (I know all too well that the caterpillars of this butterfly will consume dill, as I had a swarm of caterpillars eat through half of the dill in my garden last year. These voracious eaters would take down a three-foot-tall plant in its entirety in only a few short days!)