Greek to me!

 

A male Gorgon Copper (Lycaena gorgon), photographed along Pine Flat Road on 2 May 2015.

So you have to wonder about that name, don't you?  I wasn't sure what "Gorgon" referred to...and after looking around, I'm still not completely sure.

A gorgon is a female creature of Greek mythology.  The three most famous gorgons are Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa.  Yes, that Medusa, with snakes for hair, who could turn people into stone.

But why would this butterfly be named after them?  I found one reference to their hands/claws being made of brass.  Could there be a connection between the color of the butterfly and the hands of the gorgons?  

I also noticed references to "gorgon coins" — ancient coins embossed with the disembodied head of Medusa.  Were some of these coins copper colored?  Did the color of this butterfly make Boisduval, who named it, think of gorgon coins?

If you know the answer, I'd love to hear the story.

 

I also wondered about what to call the background color of the wings.  Can you see the pinkish tinge to the underside of the wings in the picture above?  Well, my mind wanted a name for that color, but I wasn't certain what it would be.

What do you think?

You'll laugh at me.  I could have trusted my eyes and just compared the photos to some color swatches.  But I decided to use the color sampler in Adobe Photoshop.  I sampled the butterfly wing, and then compared it to some imported Pantone color samples. 

The closest color matches?  Pastel Rose Tan, Rosewater, and Rose Smoke — depending on where I sampled the wing. You can evaluate these colors on the Pantone website if you'd like (search for "rose" in the color finder): http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/colorfinder.aspx

This Gorgon Copper generated some mysteries!

P.S.  Eric remembered the gorgon from Dungeons & Dragons — "a magical beast that resembles a bull covered in dusky, metallic scales" (description from Wikipedia).  Based on the Greek gorgons, it sounds like the bull-like depiction might have been misplaced, but there's yet another reference to a metal!

Cruising

 

A male Western River Cruiser (Macromia magnifica) — photographed on Pine Flat Road in Healdsburg, CA, on 2 May 2015.

I had a funny experience with this species today.  I was walking along Pine Flat Road when a dragonfly shadow passed by.  I looked up to see a very large dragonfly patrolling along the road.  It was so large that its size caught my attention.  I thought, "Well, that's larger than most darners — so it's either a darner I don't see very often or it's something else."

Luckily, the dragonfly landed. I didn't have my binoculars or camera at the time, so I ran back to the car for the camera, ran back to the site where the dragonfly was perched, and snapped a few shots just before it flew off.

When I was taking the pictures, I could tell that it was a river cruiser —  an exciting observation for me, as it's my first in Sonoma County, and this is one of my favorite groups of dragonflies.

There are only 7 species of river cruisers in North America, and this is the only species found west of the Rocky Mountains.

At home, I tried to learn a little more about Western River Cruisers online.  One of the first web pages I found was Don Roberson's where he said this:

"It is quite large — 3 inches long with a 4 inch wingspan — and thus is larger than all darners, except Giant Darner..."

Don's description made me smile because it was exactly what stood out to me upon first seeing a Western River Cruiser flying down the road.

Things to look for in the picture above: extremely long legs; large gray eyes; a single yellow stripe on the side of the thorax; pale leading edges of the wings; broad terminal abdominal segments, giving it a clubbed appearance; a slight arch to the abdomen.  These are elegant dragonflies!