Monarch on a Verbena - a photo on Flickriver

            When flowers attack - one moment you're happily sucking down your lunch, then suddenly it is sucking right back, and you realise you've bitten off more than you can chew.

A female Danaus plexippus (Monarch butterfly) in a spot of bother after drinking too greedily and too deep from our Verbena bonariensis (purpletop vervain, clustertop vervain, Argentinian vervain) in our garden (Christchurch, New Zealand).

I captured it using its left middle leg (i.e. the foremost if you ignore the set kept permanently up against its body so is rarely ever seen) to paw at the side of the thin part of the tube (the 2 frames preceding this one), then pause briefly in its effort during the frame you see here before getting its leg up over the top of the flower and pushing it down bit by bit to extricate its long tongue before stowing it and flying off. This was deftly done in under a second, likely the result of frequent experience (it took 0.7s all up - 7 frames captured at 10fps).

The image is set against a backdrop of pot of orange marigolds, raised up on a table. This matched the height of the flower when it was a bit shorter in its first year of life - this season most are approaching 2m so may be a bit trickier to work with.

Taken on: April 10, 2022

Tags:

Verbena

bonariensis

180mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM APO Macro

Nature

Flower

clustertop vervain

Summer

Christchurch

macro

Insect

plexippus

D500

Monarch Butterfly

macrophotography

purpletop vervain

Danaus

Bug

Colour

shot at home

Animal

Gold

Canterbury

Lepidoptera

Pink

Butterfly

New Zealand

colorful

Orange

Sigma

Color

Argentinian vervain

Plant « less

Sets appears in: • shot at home • Butterflies of New Zealand

Camera: Nikon D500, f/8.0, 1/1250 sec, 180mm (=270mm), ISO 720 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D500
Lens:	180mm f/2.8
Aperture:	f/8.0
Exposure Time:	0.001 sec (1/1250)
Focal Length:	180mm (35mm equivalent: 270mm)
ISO:	720
Exposure Bias:	+1 EV
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Manual
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	GIMP 2.10.32
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