We have a Mesquite Tree in front of our house that is doomed, in fact it is already more or less dead. The killer is hanging from all over the tree. It is a parasitic mistletoe that attaches to a tree at several points and drains it dry.
The mistletoe has a saving grace, however: it is the foodplant of one of the most startlingly beautiful butterflies we have here, The Great Purple Hairstreak. The butterfly finishes its larval and pupal stage about the first of April, and then drops down to a hedge of Little-Leaf Sumac below it, just as that plant begins blooming.
If we can remember in time, we go out and try to photograph it. The problem is, it is a very tiny butterfly and very nervous and you need to get very close to it, and exactly at right angles. And you need to photograph it almost the first day it comes out, because its wings and elaborate tail are fragile and subject to tearing. After two or three days it is a wreck.
You have to photograph it at right angles because that is the only angle from which your picture will show the finest details of the colored scales on the wings. The unhelpful butterfly gets on a bloom and then slowly walks around in a circle on it, so that you constantly lose the right angle. The only thing you can do is take lots of pictures hoping some of them will be in the right place.
Let's see how I just did.
Well it looks like the head in the top picture is in focus, but the tail isn't.
The middle picture is twisted around, and the tail is messed up.
And the bottom picture finally has everything in place.
