At Last a Butterfly

When I first got my camera I thought it would be really easy to take a photo of a butterfly. I was wrong.  Seemingly photogenic and benign, butterflies are very sensitive to the presence of the hunter, and when approached will often gracefully flit away, leaving the hopeful photographer earthbound and photoless. The photographer of Not as the Crow Flies gave me some good advice, to get to know their habits, where they like to hang out. She told me to try to seem less like a predator, and more like someone who was gently in tune with her surroundings.

It took me over a year of following butterflies around the garden to no avail before one would let me approach and point a camera at it. The photos I got are of a Regular Swallowtail butterfly (regular is what the Japanese call it, I happen to think it's pretty spectacular) with the Latin nomenclature of Papilio xuthus. They look like regular photo shots, too, and you wouldn't know that I braved death to get my first shots of a butterfly.
This is the story you don't see: A convergence of pathways had put the butterfly, me, and a thirsty killer bee all in the same place at the same time. The butterfly was tentatively perched on an iris leaf, I was trying to approach as a person gently in tune with her surroundings, and a large killer bee, who was getting territorial over the water urn around which all this was happening, was divebombing my head and back with loud angry buzzes, and buzzing the butterfly to boot.
Normally I would back off right away and let the bee have the territory. The bee knows this very well, being a regular visitor to the garden and having successfully routed me countless times. ( I am probably not going to photograph the killer bee, by the way.)
But in that moment, hunched over the water urn, I could feel at last the magical connection happening with the butterfly, and I found myself very forcefully telling the killer bee to get out of the picture.  Amazingly, it left in a huff and stayed away for almost two days. That, I guess, is how you have to deal with a killer bee who won't let you commune with a butterfly.