Am I Blue?

Quest For The Marine Blue: 2026 

Michael Sedano

It would have been 2020 when I spot the first specimen of a butterfly, new to me, that continues to hold my attention when I walk through gardens, now in search of the perfect foto of this gorgeous gem.

I looked up the one I photographed at a distance. I marveled at its name, “marine blue” Leptotes marina. It wasn't blue. It was mottled brown. Why is that speckled brown butterfly called Marine blue? 

Over succeeding months I wander perplexed as can be that this brown-speckled creature I see only at a distance, has “blue” in its name. 

Finally I see it, the blue! My photographer’s quest gains a high point in search of the blue. Once sighted once determined to see another. Today, like a blue moon you’ll see me standing alone, near a plumbago cluster or some anonymous shrubbery. 

I'll be watching a cloud of whitish grey insects that flitter incessantly, rarely landing. I hold the camera against my chest, poised to raise the viewfinder to the left eye as my right eye vigilantly surveys the flitting white souls, I seek the one or two who land near enough for a foto. 

And long enough. Touch-and-go is the Marine blue’s habit. When mating seems a good idea, the resting butterfly spreads its wings, opening the brown-speckled exterior to a glittery purple-blue inner wing with a blue fuzzy covering across its thorax. I'm not fast enough to capture instants when a second blue thrashes into the open-winged beauty and the pareja flits away.

Shadow and interior branches take away most of the glowing blue and purple. Out in open shade makes glorious, detailed portraits. Full sun gives intense contrast and, at the right angle, great color. I prefer a 100mm macro lens; it creates images of precision and detail.

Recent years have been tough for Leptotes marina sightings. Reliable sites became unreliable and sightings remained catch as catch can and way over there pa’lla you see the flittings of what might be Marine blue, or the more common Grey hairstreak. By the time I walk to the spot, they’ve flitted away. 

Only as October 2026 wraps for the year does my Huntington Library walkabout help me produce a current year once again blue foto. 

The image happens in full sunlight over my shoulder. It’s the only butterfly to land near enough for the macro lens’ focusing capacity. 

I step off the paved path onto the Huntington’s don’t-tread-on-me tierra, angle myself to within six inches of the creature, dance the lens in and out until I find the focus across the entire butterfly. I push the button. And again and again until the vista in the viewfinder is just leaves. The sighting for 2026 produces only a dozen fotos. I like one good enough to share, so as usual, I am satisfied to have what I have.

December 2022 marks the end of the fourth year Barbara and I lived with Alzheimer’s dementia. As sole caregiver—I would not have it any other way—I needed regular respites. 

A four-times a week respite most often finds me camera in hand at one of southern California’s large gardens, the Huntington Library and the LA County Arboretum. 

I walk and see what I can see and forget what I can forget and resolve the unresolvable. When I see a butterfly or bird my enormous complicated world becomes the limits of my viewfinder. For these fractions of seconds This is all there is. I am here. Press the button.

Here is my La Bloga column from a December 2022 walkabout when I exulted having found the answer to the question, why is that speckled brown butterfly called Marine blue? 

Mira nomás! 

2026. Here is the camera's full-frame view of the inch-long Marine blue. It doesn't land on a flowering bush, the Dalea bicolor where I'm standing. When it opens its wings I'm breathless. My quest is a foto showing how it gets its name and here it is. All I have to do is twist my body and lean forward and not fall on my face.

2026. The butterfly is oblivious to the happy photographer who's crept on his knees to a closer vantage spot and gets to move in for a close-up with the close-up lens. The tattered wing and fading color identify this as an old-timer making a few final forays in search of a mate and a place in the sun.

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From La Bloga Archives:

Mystery Mariposa Comes Into Focus

Michael Sedano

Original location: https://labloga.blogspot.com/2022/12/marine-blue-plan-comes-together.html 

Realms of green make up my oft-traveled routes when I consider how the morning light finds a bird or butterfly where I point my camera during my morning respite walkabouts at Huntington Library. 

Gulf Fritillary on Jessamine cluster

As a full-time caregiver, I know the vital importance of having time to myself. I buy two mornings with a visiting caregiver, and twice a week, Barbara attends a dementia daycare center, giving me six hours respite time all to myself to do with as I please. I pay a premium to walk the gardens of the Huntington Library two hours early, so that's what I please. 

Fritillary rests on Savila penca

A photographer gets the early light and not a lot of foot traffic to scare off the critters that draw my lens. The membership is worth the money and, membership has its privileges. You get the whole place to yourself, casí.

One morning I stalked the Aechmea flowers along the rainforest trail. My eye catches a white fleck against deep green. The tiny moth, or butterfly, flits erratically about, touches down but doesn’t land. 

I wait it out. The white speck flits in and out of the shadows, touching and flitting, disappearing into the leaves only to reappear a few plants away.

Then it lands. I approach and the white speck flutters away. I get a fuzzy foto that I identify as a Marine Blue butterfly. I'm intrigued. The name belies the look of this brown mottle winged soul. 

I add the Marine Blue to my inner alert list. I begin filtering the view sensitive to those flitting white specks on a horizon. Not the White Cabbage butterfly, nor an assortment of white moths and hover flies and tiny bees. Rarely catching a glimpse of the elusive Blue, I stay alert with high hopes.

Butterfly and bird photography takes what nature provides. When I see one, I see one, rarely three, in the distance. I see those white flecks and have no clue to the blue. 

"Ah ha!" moment: Marine Blue shows its color

Spring is in full flush in late March when I see my first blue Marine Blue butterfly on an unfamiliar plant. I get a foto at long distance. 

I see a few folded wings on this plant subsequently, but despite long waits there, not a one Blue parks and opens its wings to show off its hidden spectrum. The butterflies park and flit, I stand and fret.

Unsatisfaction is not dissatisfaction. You can do something about nagging unsatisfaction. Something has nagged at me since that inroductory sighting at the Aechmea, something about this tiny erratic mysteriously-named life. I need to get a close look, and I need to get a macro showing all the details and reason for giving this beast its name, Marine Blue butterfly.

My walkabouts at the Huntington Library and at the Los Angeles County Arboretum a few miles away  grow more intent on finding the Marine Blue . 

I capture many a Fritillary, a Monarch and a Swallowtail. Dozens of Colibrí bring my heart joyful moments of pure respite as I hold the floating creature in the viewfinder, slow my breathing, anchor the lens to my body, synchronize eye brain finger decisive moment and press the button. 

But none of the fotos feature the Marine Blue butterfly. 

I grow more deliberate in my walkabouts, choosing trails where antes I’d spotted the Blue, stopping on a trail on a sunny morning watching for flitting white specks, even shaking a plant now and again to see what flies out. No Blues. 

The Mother Lode. The Elephant Graveyard. The Diamond Mine of the 7 Dwarves! Uncle Scrooge’s Money Vault. Eureka. 

I find the place where Marine Blues come to feed on crisp Fall mornings when the garden offers little else. 

With changing seasons, Butterflies have become scarce, and with Winter around the corner I’d abandoned thoughts of capturing the elusive Blue in 2022. 

Weeks had passed without a sighting when songs of feeding Colibrís stop me in my tracks. The birds hide behind thick branches so I planned to walk on to the Sausage Tree flower where hummingbirds might await.

I whirl toward the path when a white fleck catches my eye. 

Only a Blue flies like that. Then a second and third appear like magic and so it is. They fly into a ray of mid-morning sunlight and catch the light. They target a non-descript bush growing like a barrier between the path and a spectacular red Esperanza tree where the hummingbirds lurk. 

Not a barrier plant at all! It is the Marine Blue motherlode, Dalea bicolor. I stand stunned at the sight of this endless parade of flitting white specks that circle about the plant then land. The insect dances upon a flower cluster, dips its proboscis into the well of nectar. Then they spread their wings to catch the light and lighten my heart.

I won’t label my quest after a Marine Blue an “obsession” although I admit to growing frustration last Summer when I couldn’t find the Blue in the garden, and that grew into a klnd of anxiety that when I did see a Marine Blue, I had the wrong lens or I couldn’t get near enough with the right lens. And I'd nearly abandoned hope for this year of seeing them again. 

That’ s all in the past now because I know where Dalea bicolor grows at the Huntington. And I've seen the Marine Blue at just the right light when their wings shimmer with diamond dust painting the hidden reaches of their namesake wings. Ay de mi.

The Marine Blue led me to the Dalea’s tiny flowers to teach me to appreciate "nondescript" dust-catching bushes growing in the shadow of spectacular ornamentals. 

Órale, that was no obsession but a well-defined goal pursued with a deliberate process of looking. Looking just at the world as I find it. Looking and not thinking about all those caregiver duties and responsibilities that you can’t see when you’re making a photograph of one particular six by four inch slice of the real world there at the end of your lens and that’s all there is for right now.

Sabes que? This close up is why.