I love snakes~

I was out practicing with my large butterfly net, so when I go to WV to capture leps for photographing for the Atlas, I don't waste time in practice. IT'S HARD to capture these guys even with a huge net! but this is what I came up with so far;

A Cabbage White (Pieris rapae) was my first capture. After several minutes flying around like a bat out of hell, or a butterfly trying to escape a nutty lady with a net...it settled down enough to sit on my finger. I was so excited and nervous it was going to fly away before I got a pic ( so people would believe me) I didn't really take the time to get a fabulous photo, but here is what I got;

Then the Red Admirals, well I think they are really hard to get, as their flight pattern, very sporatic and appears to have no pattern at all, well it's just so fast and furious.. but low and behold, I captured a 

 Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta). 

He/she was tattered and torn, and after flying around the box like mad, finally allowed me to hold it too.

I saw a Swallow tail butterfly head down to the creek, so I decided to follow it, since I know the males "puddle" while they wait and watch for females. On my way down the path to the creek, wallah

I near stepped on an Eastern Garter snake, what a beauty.

Small little one, maybe 12- 18 inches.

it was very tolerant of me at first, allowing me to carry it around and "play" with it a bit

but then

it began to get annoyed, and actually lunged at me mouth agape

trying to bite me, I of course let it go at that point.. 

I sure didn't want to upset it anymore or make it have a no good very bad day...

it had a small injury I noticed after I got the photos downloaded. I hope it will 

be ok! 

then there was this guy  White-striped Black - Hodges#7430 (Trichodezia albovittata)

such a pretty thing, so very tiny...just about 1.5cm wing span

a MOTH ! mind you... in the daytime! 

I read that there are moths that like daylight, but most prefer 

the dark.

FUN times on Robin's Nest Acres...

more to come