Butterflies have a pair of beautiful wings, the pattern is gorgeous, colorful, and when they dance in the air, they are like flying flowers, so they are known as "flying flowers".
I have a few friends in the Hong Kong photography industry, and in our weekend leisure time, we photograph the countryside scenery, photograph the street people, photograph the giant ships that shuttle in the sea, and photograph the butterflies that flutter in the mountains.
Butterflies are the spirits of the four seasons, pink butterflies come in the spring, phoenix butterflies dance in the wind in summer, gray butterflies bring joy to the sad autumn, and spotted butterflies also stand on the branches in the cold winter.
In Hong Kong, as long as it is a sunny day, pick up the camera and go out into the wild, you can always photograph the wonderful posture of butterflies like fireworks and shooting stars.
There is a Phoenix Garden Butterfly Conservation Area in Hong Kong, and one weekend in the summer of 2017, I asked a friend to go to phoenix garden to take butterflies together.
Located two kilometres outside Tai Po Town, Phoenix Garden has recorded more than 200 species of butterflies. Walking into the nursery area, passing a small bridge, crossing a winding forest path, entering a yard, the eyes suddenly lit up: only to see a few trees high and low, pink, blue, gray, brown... Dozens of butterflies flew around the branches, landing on the flowers from time to time to suck the juice.
My friend and I were so excited that we quickly took out our camera and started shooting. I targeted a beautiful blue butterfly, which was a blue-spotted butterfly. It was staring at a crown of flowers, its body flicking up and down, its wings opening and closing, sometimes like an open fan, sometimes like a flag hanging, sometimes like a colorful sign erected. I kept adjusting the angle and took dozens of "clicks" shots.
Photo by Mu Yi
The blue-spotted butterfly is named after the blue stripes on its wings. It is widely distributed in Southeast Asia and is said to move across the ocean with the monsoon, flying from south to north in summer and from north to south in autumn, moving up to more than 2,000 kilometers. To this end, the green spotted butterfly attracts a lot of people's attention and records their whereabouts. In Japan, marking the green spotted butterfly has almost become a national movement, even for elementary school students.
Suddenly, a small cyan-winged butterfly flew overhead. "Blue Phoenix!" My friend called out, and I hurriedly turned the camera over to track it. The blue phoenix butterfly has strong flight power and likes to visit flowers to suck honey, but it is very alert, always just falling, and flying rapidly, so that you can chase around and press the shutter. So I changed my strategy and found a big flower to watch over the "butterfly". Sure enough, the green phoenix butterfly flew back in a moment. I held my breath, and by the moment it fell, I had snapped several shots in a row.
Beautiful tabby butterfly Mu Yi photo
Unlike the blue phoenix butterfly, the black-veined birch-spotted butterfly here appears much more tranquil. The black-veined birch butterfly, also known as the tabby butterfly, prefers to climb on the leaves and pose in various poses to show its innate beauty and quiet and elegant temperament. I put on the tripod and took every moving picture of it without hurrying.
The hovering golden phoenix butterfly Mu Yi photographed
"The golden phoenix butterfly is coming!" Someone yelled. I saw a huge golden butterfly fairy hovering from a distance. Known as the "giant of butterflies", the male has a maximum wingspan of 110 mm and a female butterfly with a maximum wingspan of 160 mm, making it the most precious butterfly in the garden. The golden butterfly flies in a feminine posture, and the golden and black markings are brilliant in the sunlight, which looks magnificent. After it flew closer, it constantly flew up and down on the adjacent branches, dancing, and each time it flapped its wings was so calm and elegant. I kept changing the aperture, speed, and sensitivity, and took more than 30 shots in one go, even saying, "Enjoy, enjoy!"
Near noon, the temperature is getting higher and higher, and the butterflies are hiding in the shade of the forest and can't come out. We had no choice but to pack up our equipment and reluctantly left the Fengyuan Garden.
Two months later, I entered the Phoenix Garden for the second time and went into two conservation areas deep in the woods to look for butterflies. Or maybe it was because it was hot, and after nearly two hours of spinning, there were hardly any other butterflies except for a few jumping around in the branches.
Suddenly, a white dot flashed on the trunk in the distance, attracting my attention, and I slowly looked over with extremely light steps to see that it was a jade-like beautiful narrow-spotted anchovy butterfly lying on the trunk.
The narrow-spotted anchovy butterfly rarely visits flowers, loves tree sap, and flies fast, but at the moment it is quietly and gentle with another unknown butterfly next to it. Are they whispering and talking, or are they talking to each other and talking about love? I don't know, hurry up and set up the tripod, install the camera, and make this moment an eternity.
The narrow-spotted anchovy butterfly with a vein of affection Mu Also photographed
I shot it for more than ten minutes before and after the butterfly, and they were motionless, squinting, paying no attention to me, the busy layman. I walked around the neighborhood again, photographed a few butterflies, and when I came back here, the two of them were still looking at each other, and their veins were full of emotion, not half a minute away.
The butterfly is loyal to love, has only one companion in life, and is a representative of loyalty in the insect world. Li Bai once had a poem: "Butterfly yellow in August, double flying west garden grass." "Dust haunts the wanderer's face, butterflies make beauty noodles." Nowadays, more and more couples choose to hold a butterfly release ceremony at their weddings to pray for sweet love and happy marriage.
One weekend in May of the following year, I went back to the Phoenix Garden to look for the butterfly, but I never saw it again. I crossed the ditches and drilled through the woods, but I accidentally photographed a jade-banded butterfly. It fluttered its wings in the air for a while, and then it dropped its feathers on the flowers.
Jade ribbon phoenix butterfly Mu Yi photo
The jade-banded butterfly is named after the male butterfly's dark wings with a column of white spots like jade ribbons running across the entire wing. But the famous jade belt phoenix butterfly is not the jade belt, but the poignant legend of the Liang Zhuhua butterfly. It is said that Liang Zhuhua butterflies are transformed into jade belt phoenix butterflies, which fly out of the South Mountain, and since then they have been with each other and will never be separated. As the Qing Dynasty poet Shi Chengyu's "Jingnan Bamboo Branch Words" describes: "The reader goes to the deserted platform, the spring breeze grows wild moss in the years, the peach blossoms on the mountain are red like fire, and a pair of butterflies fly again." ”
I entered Fengyuan three times and photographed nearly 20 butterfly species, but this is only one-tenth of Fengyuan. The Hong Kong Phoenix Garden Butterfly Conservation Area is maintained by a group of volunteers who love butterflies and pay attention to butterflies, who regularly hold butterfly ecology lectures, hold butterfly photography competitions, carry out butterfly ecological censuses, organize butterfly cultural and ecological guided tours, etc., to guide citizens and students to care for butterflies and protect the ecology. On weekends, citizens and students flock here to visit.
Butterflies are loved by everyone.
I think that people love and appreciate butterflies, not only because it has colorful wings, but also because it has a light and feminine posture; not only in its ability to fly thousands of miles, but also in its perseverance to adapt to nature without fear of challenges; not only in its loyalty to love, but also in its earth-shattering transformation in the face of life and death, and in its earth-shattering transformation!
The butterfly's life goes through four periods, namely the egg, larvae, pupae, and adult stages. The eggs hatch into larvae, the worm molts into a pupal, and the process of pupae breaking out of the feathering process is the most difficult, the most painful, the most shocking, the most amazing process. It was a rebirth of a butterfly, a song of life.
I've always wanted to photograph a butterfly metamorphosis and feathering process, which was a dream I've had since I photographed butterflies.
One night in late March this year, I received a call from my friend in the photography industry, Mr. Z, asking me to go to Fengyuan to photograph butterflies again, and I thanked him because I was busy with work. Mr. Z said: "Don't you really want to photograph the process of butterfly transformation and feathering, tomorrow morning there is a chance, as long as there is less time." ”
I was moved.
The next day, before seven o'clock, before dawn, Mr. Z and the Hong Kong photographer Mr. C came to a small hill near the Phoenix Garden, through a bush forest, to an unknown dwarf tree, Mr. Z put his index finger to his mouth and made a "boo" gesture, and then pointed to a thumb-thick trunk in front of him, only to see that there were two butterfly pupae hanging not far from its back, one green, like a cocoon, and the other with a transparent pupa shell, and I could see the chicks shrinking into a clump inside the shell.
Mr. Z said that the pupae shell was opaque, and once it became transparent, it meant that it was about to feather. He told us to sit together in the grass under the tree and patiently explained to us that when the butterfly larvae are about to pupate, they will forage everywhere, and when they are satisfied, the larvae will tie themselves to the leaves a little bit, or hang upside down on the branches, slowly pupating. Why do butterflies pupate? That's because the larvae and adults have huge differences in external morphology and internal structure, which requires going through a transitional worm state – pupae. He also pointed to the butterfly chrysalis, saying that the pupa seems to be a process of not eating or moving, but it is by no means as calm as it seems, because its body is undergoing a violent and painful decomposition and reorganization work like "phoenix nirvana", which is tantamount to a revolution and finally transmutation into a new life, a process that takes about 10 to 14 days.
"Only by enduring the pain of tearing hearts and lungs can we bear the beauty of its flapping wings and flying high!" Mr. Z added.
The butterfly feathering was so thrilling that Mr. C and I were shocked to hear it. Suddenly, a crisp "squeak" sounded, and Mr. Z bounced up like a spring, shouting as he stood up: "It's going to feather!" ”
I also quickly got up, set up the bipod, and stared with my eyes wide open. I saw the transparent pupa shell split in a cross shape on the head and back of the chest. The butterfly's head and forefoot are struggling to squeeze outwards, and in the blink of an eye, they have pupated out. After a minute, the midfoot and hindfoot did not want to show weakness, and rushed out of the hard pupa shell one after another. Subsequently, the three legs work together, and the butterfly wings are pulled out little by little. Between the electric flint stones, the butterfly's several feet quickly climbed the trunk to borrow power, and in less than two minutes, the body was also pulled out of the pupal shell. At this time, the butterfly hangs upside down from the trunk, and its wings are soft and wrinkled, like a newborn chicken, looking timid and a little ugly.
The feathered golden phoenix butterfly Mu Yi photographed
Mr. C was pleasantly surprised: "It's a golden butterfly!" ”
I was watching it fascinatingly, and Mr. Z asked, "Did you shoot it?" Confused, I slapped my thigh and shouted, "Oops! Forgot! ”
Although I was not able to capture the stunning moment of butterfly feathering, I am not sorry to witness its gripping and shocking process. After five or six minutes, the butterfly wings are stretched out and suddenly become beautiful and graceful. Mr. Z said that the butterfly's wing membranes have not yet dried up, and the wings are still very weak, and they cannot fly immediately, and they must wait about one to two hours before they can flutter their wings and dance with the wind.
We sat down again and talked about the riots that have occurred in Hong Kong for more than half a year, and Mr. Z said with emotion: "Hong Kong should also be transformed and reborn like a butterfly!" ”
"I've been in Hong Kong for almost 60 years, and Hong Kong has become completely unknown." Mr. Z was a little excited, but his views were philosophical and thought-provoking: "The phoenix, through the torment of the fire and the great test, is reborn and immortalized, so that the feathers are richer, the tone is clearer, and the gods are more marrow; the larvae go through painful struggles and the tragedy of pupae, feathering into butterflies, winning new life, so that the shape is more beautiful, the body is softer, and the strength is greater." Without a butterfly feathering and a phoenix nirvana-like purification of the new cloth, it will be difficult for Hong Kong to punish evil and promote good, to survive in a desperate situation, to get out of difficulties, and to have long-term peace and stability. ”
Listening to Mr. Z's impassioned and resounding words of justice, I was in awe of him.
After chatting for a while, Mr. C cried out, "Butterflies are starting to fly!" ”
I saw the golden butterfly that had just been feathered, flashing its beautiful wings and swirling around the tree. We quickly got up to shoot. After a few minutes, the butterflies swayed their delicate bodies, danced in colorful clothes, and the fairy floated away. Looking at the beautiful butterflies flying farther and farther away in the lens, I seem to see that Hong Kong, which has stopped violence and suppressed chaos and restored the rule of law, is seizing the opportunity of the change of fate, gaining the power to turn pupa into a butterfly, and realizing the transformation of the bones, such as the butterfly that has broken the pupae and feathered to wash away the lead, refresh the spirit, and fly high...
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【Source】 Southern Press Media Group South + client
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