It's a sin to kill a mockingbird, wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning author Harper Lee in her classic novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird."

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing except make music for us to enjoy,"  one of her characters, Miss Maudie, wisely observed. "They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corn cribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

Harper Lee's work came to mind yesterday when we saw a praying mantis devouring a monarch butterfly on our butterfly bush, located next to several milkweed plants.  We watched the clipped monarch wings flutter down and land among the leaves.

It was a female monarch. She may have stopped to sip some nectar during her egg-laying mission.  The hungry predator ambushed her.

The shock of seeing a delicate monarch gripped between spiked forelegs stuns you, especially when you've just reared two monarchs and have two more to go.

"Umm, do you mind?" we wanted to ask the mantis. "Please eat the cabbage white butterflies, stink bugs and aphids, not the monarchs."

Praying mantids are considered beneficial insects, but all we've seen them eat are honey bees, sunflower bees, butterflies and an occasional Gulf Fritillary caterpillar. However, they do eat ants, wasps, flies, and moths, as well. The larger praying mantids prey on hummingbirds.

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation summed up the monarch decline well on its website: "Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) of North America are renowned for their long-distance seasonal migration and spectacular winter gatherings in Mexico and California. The monarch butterfly population has recently declined to dangerously low levels. In the 1990s, estimates of up to one billion monarchs made the epic flight each fall from the northern plains of the U.S. and Canada to sites in the oyamel fir forests north of Mexico City, and more than one million monarchs overwintered in forested groves on the California Coast. Now, researchers and citizen scientists estimate that only about 56.5 million monarchs remain, representing a decline of more than 80% from the 21 year average across North America."

Okay, praying mantis. We know. It was only one. You have to eat, too. You needed the protein to lay your ootheca. But have you ever considered how tasty and prevalent cabbage white butterflies are?

Never say "pipe down" to a pipevine swallowtail.

It's a butterfly we treasure.

You may have seen it nectaring on your butterfly bush. It's black with blue iridescent upper wings and orange arrowhead-like spots on its inner wings.  

Butterfly expert Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, says on his website, Art's Butterfly World, that Battus philenor is "unmistakable and very conspicuous as both a larva and an adult."

So are the eggs. The eggs are red or rust-colored, while the larvae or caterpillars are black with red spots. 

Shapiro describes Battus philenor as "the signature riparian butterfly of our region, occurring along streams in foothill canyons and on the Central Valley floor, essentially everywhere where its only host plant, California pipevine or Dutchman's pipe, Aristolochia californica, occurs."

The butterfly, also nicknamed "blue swallowtail," is found throughout North America and Central America.

"Adults are eager visitors to many flowers, including wild radish, California buckeye, blue dicks, Ithuriel's spear, and Yerba Santa," according to Shapiro. "In summer they regularly nectar at yellow starthisle when there are no native plants in bloom."

"This species is warningly colored and inedible to vertebrate predators," Shapiro writes. "It derives its protection from the toxic aristolochic acids produced by the host, which it sequesters; females even pass these along to the eggs, which are also protected (and are brick red, laid in bunches of up to 20, and quite conspicuous). Eggs are laid only on young, tender, growing shoot tips and the larvae must begin by feeding on these. Initially they feed in groups. As they get larger they scatter and can tackle large, mature leaves. But because these react to feeding damage by becoming more toxic and unpalatable, a larva will feed on a single leaf only for a short time and then has to move on. Eventually most or all leaves end up damaged, but few are badly damaged. The larvae also feed eagerly on the immature fruits, which look like small bananas with fluted edges. In big swallowtail years little if any seed ends up being set."

The adults live about a month.

So, let's enjoy them while we can! We followed this one around on our butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii) this afternoon as the sun dipped low in the sky. Usually, we see only the side view, but this one provided a dorsal view, flashing its colors.

Blue. Brilliant blue. iridescent blue. 

Is any other blue so glorious?

It's sort of like "The Beauty and the Beast."

Or "The Pollinator and the Pest."

A gorgeous Western Tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus), seeking nectar from a butterfly bush, touched down and began to feed.

It didn't take long for the butterfly to spot a stink bug crawling on top of the blossom. This blossom's not big enough for both of us.

The shield-shaped bug quickly scrambled out of its way.

Score:
Butterfly: 1
Stink Bug: 0

It's like going to the circus.

A bee circus.

When you see honey bees gather pollen from a gaura (Gaura linheimeri), it's as if  they ran off and joined the circus. You'll see hire-wire (er...high-stem) acts, somersaults, pirouettes, cartwheels and cliffhangers.

They teeter on the edge of a petal and then petal-push to the other side. They buzz upside down and then right themselves.  They're under the Big Top and then varoom, they've over it.

The gaura, a leggy perennial, is a native of North America and a member of the Onagraceae family. Its butterflylike flowers, pink and white, are drop-dead gorgeous.

The gaura is also known as "the wand flower," "the butterfly bush" and "the bee blossom."