Swallowtail Caterpillar

The Uphill Climb

Hide and Seek

The Contrast in Motion

The End of the Line

This evening when I went out to get parsley from the herb garden I found these interesting, beautiful creatures.  I was not sure if they were caterpillars or some type of pest similar to a tomato worm just visiting to take what remains of the summer herbs.  I  ran inside to research my find and found that the Swallowtail Caterpillar apparently loves to eat Parsley.  The Swallowtail Butterfly drops her eggs on the Parsley plant in July and by mid- September the caterpillars have grown and live off of the plant until time for their transformation.  Nature is so amazing.  Little miracles exist all around us and are just waiting to be discovered.  Keep your eyes open, they are often in disguise.

Just a side note about the photographs.  This afternoon was rainy, and cloudy, and very, very windy.  With that said I wanted to keep the shutter speed as high as possible, wanted to avoid additional noise so kept the ISO at 400, and therefore had to have the aperture pretty open at 5.  As a result, the shallow depth of field and some motion blur give way to images that are not quite crisp, but I don’t think this fact takes away from the overall capture.