Giant Swallowtail vermilion river

Well we did make it out to Necedah NWR today. The weather was cooperative and despite the ticks and deer flies we had a pretty good time. We did get some more red-headed woodpecker picks but today we seemed to spend a lot of our time photographing butterflies.

There were plenty of butterflies fluttering around Necedah, many more then we saw last year around this time, so I am hopeful that this year will be a better year all around for butterflies then last year was. Last year we did not see many butterflies at the beginning of the summer.
The end of the summer was a different story however. Not only were there a good number of monarchs around gathering to migrate, but we were also fortunate to have an eruption of giant swallowtail in the south eastern quarter of the state. Typically very few of these large butterflies are seen in Minnesota and then usually only in the very south eastern border of the state. Last year though I frequently saw giant swallowtail up around the Twin Cities. I photographed this one on the shore of the Vermilion River near Hastings Minnesota. I also photographed numerous giant swallowtail at Carpenter Nature Center.