The Hackberry Emperor, Asterocampa celtis, is a butterfly that exclusively uses hackberry trees as its host plant. We have an extreme over-abundance of hackberry trees here at Blue Dragon Hollow. This month we have seen hundreds of these butterflies as they are emerging from their cocoons and flying around doing their butterfly thing.
Today, while I was cutting up all the trimmed branches from the pecan tree, I happened to check my watch for the time, and one of these butterflies landed on my finger tip while I had my arm up to see the watch.
I hardly noticed it was there, but I’m glad I saw it just before I dropped my arm. I held my hand there for about 6 minutes while this little guy used his proboscis to gather the pecan tree sap from my finger tip. It tickled. He ate the whole time I moved from the pile of pecan branches to the table to get my phone to take a picture of him. I got the picture, and he flew away.
