Milkweed with a Visitor

I leaned my spinning rod against a milkweed and then saw that someone was already there. It's a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, but I am not enough of an expert to say if is is Eastern or Western.  Chaffee County, so on the Eastern Slope. Does that count as "west of the Rockies"? Or is it just "west of the Mississippi" that counts. Confusing.

The experts at What's that Bug? would seem to lean toward Western.  Butterflies and Moths of North America  (I am bookmarking that site) seems to agree.

OK, so Western. And Showy Milkweed. (There is no Shy, Retiring Milkweed, but there are Wallflowers. Around here, they tend to have orange blooms.)

Smashing Painted Ladies

I was driving up the canyon into the Wet Mountain Valley, flinching every time that a Painted Lady butterfly hit the windshield.

They are migrating this time of year, headed south, and apparently this summer produced good breeding conditions.

"I must have killed millions of them," said the FedEx driver as she passed a package to the café owner in Westcliffe.

"We'll call her Butterfly Killer," said the owner facetiously, after the driver went out the door.

As usual, we go smashing along through beauty.

UPDATE: The migration was large enough to create radar echoes. That's kind of wonderful.