14 ZEBRAS ON A BRANCH

Around 7AM I spotted these Zebras clumped sleeping together on a dead palm bloom. They love this one woodsy area of my yard and seem to prefer dead branches--must not be slippery. The temperatures dipped in the 50s. Maybe they are cold.

I love these little guys.

A DAY IN JUPITER

ZEBRA CATS
I counted ten Zebra cats on this little milkweed plant, and they ravished every leaf, but the plant didn't die, and the leaves grew right back.

MALACHITE BUTTERFLY

SLEEPY TOAD
The temperature dipped into the sixties, and this toad decided to take a nap. I'd flashed ten pictures right in his face, and had to touch him to get him to move this much.

BUSY BUMBLE BEES

DRAGONFLIES GALORE - ODONATA

Common Green Darner

Wandering Gildercrop

HAMMOCK SKIPPER

Looks like someone took a bite out of this little guy's tail. Beautiful blue body.

BROWN ANOLE LIZARD

Lookin' for love in all the right places, or rather a lovely mate. Can't say I know the inner romantic machinations of a lizard's heart.

I was lucky to catch his sexy, red flaring neck--sexy to a female anole. The red fan signals "Come hither" in lizard language.

LARGE ORANGE SULPHUR

ZEBRA HELICONIUS BEATING WINGS

Is this adult Zebra drying wings, activating pheromones, signaling for mates, or all of the above?

At any time of day, dozens of these Zebra Longwings are luxuriously fluttering around the yard near their favorite spots. Zebras are considered to be brainy butterflies; Heliconius being the only known butterfly species to eat pollen. They live 4 to 6 months and forage along the same route every day, as if following a trapline.

Their caterpillars feed on Passion Vine (Passiflora) and milkweed, plants that produces cyanide from which they derive their nasty taste--a neat trick to keep the birds from snacking on them--hence their leisurely flight.

Clouded Sulphurs must fly erratic, streaking straight up and criss-crossing the sky in a yellow blur to avoid being lunch for a Scrub Jay, but Zebras sip their nectar and nibble on pollen like lazy tourists nursing a daiquiri.
CR