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I was just thinking about this. All the photos the author uses are of butterflies resting. Thanks for confirming my intuition that while butterflies fly they sp

• kadoban 5y ago
  They do spread their wings in flight, but the few photos/vids I bothered to find it's still quite distinct from the classical pinned position (in terms of the angles fore/aft more than anything). I'm sure it's a _possible_ position in which to find many species, but it seems like at best a rare one.
  • pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    Part of it is that mostly I've seen, in person, butterflies in flight - they rarely alight on a plant close enough to inspect in detail and in flight they do appear to flap like a book opening and closing; one doesn't really see the pitch changes of the wing, it looks like a simple motion. I've got some pictures of red admirals (it painted ladies, not sure) resting in "dead" pose on brambles somewhere that I took only because I'd seen this article.
    • thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > mostly I've seen, in person, butterflies in flight - they rarely alight on a plant close enough to inspect in detail and in flight they do appear to flap like a book opening and closing My father grows milkweed to support a population of monarchs. They also flap their wings open and closed while resting.