“Proboscis”

When I first started taking butterfly pictures I was almost exclusively interested in capturing their beauty.

Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, the more pictures I took the more carefully I looked at butterflies, something I probably haven’t done since I studied them in grade school.

When I took this series of pictures last Friday,

I noticed the funny foot coming straight out of the forehead, even though I knew that it couldn’t really be a foot, or at least I didn’t think so. Then somewhere from deep inside my brain the term “proboscis” arose, even if it wasn’t spelled that way in my third-grade mind.

A few moments on the web, and sure enough there’s a world of fascinating information about Butterfly parts.

It’s amazing how just paying attention changes our perception of our world, isn’t it?