The early butterfly

Mourning cloak is a strange name for anything, but that is what this butterfly is called. It is also sometimes called the grand surprise butterfly. A surprise is what I got Sunday morning, March 7, when I saw this butterfly flying. The temperature was barely 60 degrees.

This butterfly can survive the winter as an adult with wings by wedging into crevices in tree bark or leaf litter inside a hole in a tree. It's another form of inadvertent companionship in nature. A squirrel stuffs leaves into a hole and the cloak butterfly has a place to survive.

The cloak butterfly lives mostly on tree sap and is seldom seen sitting on flowers. Its dark wings absorb the sun's heat helping it survive cold days. It avoids predators such as birds and lizards by folding its wings flat against tree trunks like a moth will do. It took me a half hour of following this butterfly from place to place before it finally sat long enough in a favorable place on a sunny flat rock for me to photograph it.