Yellow Means "Look Out!"

Yellow Butterfly

I noticed this big yellow butterfly flying around in St James Cemetery. Her bright yellow color is hard to miss. 

To get a picture I needed the butterfly to settle down on something and stay put. I was lucky. She flew over to a fir tree. Then she perched on a branch and stayed put. She didn't fly away, even as I slowly moved closer to her. I took her picture from about six feet away. As you can see, she isn't just yellow. She has black stripes and touches of blue and orange.     

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

This butterfly is an "Eastern Tiger Swallowtail." The blue color on her wings shows that she is a female butterfly.  Here's a website that explains how to recognize male and female Eastern Tiger Swallowtails: https://www.butterfliesathome.com/tiger-swallowtail-butterfly.htm 

These butterflies are named "eastern" because they are found on the eastern coast of North America. They are named "tiger" because the black on yellow stripes look like tiger stripes. "Swallowtail" is the final part of their name because the bottom of their wings look like swallows' tails. 

"Look Out! 

Yellow often means "be careful!" or "look out!". People use yellow to mark pillars so that car drivers will be careful and not crash into them. 

And road workers wear yellow stripes - again so that drivers will notice them and not hit them. Yellow keeps the workers safe. 

These stairs have yellow lines on each edge so that we don't miss a step and fall downstairs. The yellow lines are there to keep us safe. 

Are school buses yellow for the same reason - yellow so that drivers notice the school bus, slow down, and look out for children getting out of the bus. What do you think? 

Dangerous Butterfly?

I don't know whether birds (who like to eat butterflies) are scared away by the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail's yellow and black stripes. Do these tiger stripes make a bird think that this butterfly is dangerous? What do you think?

Questions for you

What yellow things have you seen in your neighborhood? 

Are they yellow to get your attention and say "look out" and "be careful"?  

Or are they yellow for some other reason, like the yellow section of this mural, which celebrates bicycles?    

Here yellow is simply one color in a rainbow of different colors.