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Showing posts for 'butterflies'. Clear search
Micro Monarch
August 07, 2020 - August is the month to start searching the milkweeds for mini-monarchs, the luridly colored caterpillars of the equally...
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Inside silver
July 06, 2020 - One of my favorite butterflies is the Silver-spotted Skipper, a lepidopteran that has the distinction of being, accordin...
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Checkering in
June 28, 2020 - I haven't been doing as much exploring as I'd like—I've just been awfully busy—but today I decided to reward myself with...
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Wild pearl
May 29, 2020 - The butterfly season is just now starting to get into high gear, and this afternoon, on the way home from a potential wo...
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Hard travelin'
May 15, 2020 - With the chilly weather persisting way past its time—although, hey, this is New England...—the butterflies that, by trad...
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Skip to my confusion
August 14, 2019 - If ever there was a confusing group of butterflies, it would have to be the ones known as Skippers. Perhaps as compensat...
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Lep in repose
June 27, 2019 - These dark and often pugnacious Hairstreak butterflies have started to make their presences felt around here, particular...
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American woman
June 10, 2019 - The butterflies have come out in droves, and today, on the Dame's Rocket in the home garden, I got a new one. It was def...
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Monarch return
June 09, 2019 - Once again, and for all good... and no good... reasons, I'm so far behind that I thought I'd just post this happy shot,...
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Admiral ahoy
May 22, 2019 - I've been spotted the stunning Red Admiral butterflies off an on again for a week or so, but as the temperature has star...
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Lepidopteran poetry
May 09, 2019 - Robert Frost wrote about a "blue butterfly day" in a poem with that very title, and in it, Frost described seeing "sky f...
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Cosmopolitan beauty
March 30, 2019 - With the weather finally warming up, I've been out in the woods looking for a particular Beauty from a place called Camb...
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A touch of silver
August 21, 2018 - The intense heat and humidity have continued without apparent end, but, unlike in runs of Dog Days past, I simply refuse...
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Mimic harassment
August 10, 2018 - Today was the once-a-month-or-so time to visit the town dump, and, with the trash and recyclables deposited in their pro...
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Easy parking
August 05, 2018 - Going to the beach on a hot Sunday summer morning was probably an act of insanity, even though I had left early enough t...
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Spicy return
July 22, 2018 - This past spring, we had a reasonably decent emergence of Spicebush Swallowtail butterflies. To be sure, it was later an...
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Monarchs, incoming
June 24, 2018 - A couple of generations past the overwintering congregation in the Mexican highlands, the Monarch butterflies are back o...
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Red-spotted perfection
June 17, 2018 - At first glance, I was sorely tempted to dismiss this little gem as yet another Spicebush Swallowtail, the butterfly spe...
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At the swallowtail bar
June 04, 2018 - It was a banner year for an earlier-spring flowering shrub known as the Spicebush. It was a great 2017 for the plant's s...
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Another second
April 18, 2018 - As a naturalist, I'm always looking for firsts, but I've already discovered the year's first butterfly—the Mourning Cloa...
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Another Official Vernal Beginning
March 31, 2018 - Naturalists are forever looking for the One True Indicator that a season has actually begun, and when it comes to spring...
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Milkweed hunt
December 23, 2017 - I thought I was strong enough to tackle a trail where I knew, from earlier experience—which is to say, before surgery—ha...
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Getting to know you
September 08, 2017 - I've often voiced frustration and confusion over a group of pretty little lookalike butterflies that are lumped under th...
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Gray jewel
August 28, 2017 - The Hairstreak butterflies are pretty little jewels, but if you're not judicious, they can also be pretty confusing litt...
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Painted Ladies, two perspectives
August 01, 2017 - Whatever entomologist affixed the common name of Painted Lady to this species of Brushfoot butterfly no doubt had a sens...
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A Thoreauvian birthday gift
July 12, 2017 - Henry David Thoreau, the naturalist's naturalist to whom everyone in this business owes a debt of gratitude, would have...
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Another milkweeder
July 09, 2017 - Like a lot of things this year, the Great Spangled Fritillary butterflies were exceptionally late in emerging and reclai...
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Summer visitor
July 07, 2017 - One of the real joys of getting out on the trail is a chance to see the new and the unexpected. (To be sure, seeing the...
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Tiger in the laurels
June 11, 2017 - The Mountain Laurel Spectacular continues apace, and most folks I talk to agree that this Kalmia latifolia floral displa...
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Pinxter visitor
May 19, 2017 - The heat continues to have us firmly in its grip, and while I should be whining, I realize that the heat wave will only...
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Masterful mimic
August 20, 2016 - On a still-hot but overcast morning, I drove up to the Preston Nature Preserve to help lead an Avalonia public walk thro...
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Well-worn traveler
August 18, 2016 - To get ready to lead a public walk on the 27th to the Thomas Miner refuge, a place I got to know intimately a couple of...
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Range expansion
August 16, 2016 - There are at least a half-dozen different species of Hairstreak butterflies in our area but when I spot one of these dim...
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Great punctuation
July 28, 2016 - More often than not, I've seen a wide enough variety of flora and fauna that I don't have to repeat myself. A fern needn...
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Nymph trail
July 26, 2016 - I am at an advanced enough age that the very notion on getting on the trail—any trail—in search of wood nymphs is both m...
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Indelicate dining
July 23, 2016 - Beautiful butterflies don't always do beautiful things... at least, not to our eyes—and tastes. Case in point: I was hel...
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Happy surprise
July 01, 2016 - This morning found me at my old haunt, the Miner refuge in Stonington, where I'd spent parts of 2013 and 2014 working on...
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A new swallowtail
June 16, 2016 - If I had been an English major in the 1960s when I first tried college, I would have learned a skill called "close readi...
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Laurels for visitors
June 10, 2016 - It's been a remarkable June for Mountain Laurels, and while I thought there could be few rivals of the amazing display t...
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Into the [cedar] woods
May 11, 2016 - The Avalonia Land Conservancy, a group I do a lot of volunteering for, brought me along for an assessment trip through a...
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Elfin to elfin
April 27, 2016 - My granddaughter Stasia's in residence this week—school vacation—and we finally got in our obligatory hike up Lantern Hi...
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The blues
April 14, 2016 - One of my favorite Robert Frost poems is called "Blue Butterfly Day," and it's a perfect description of this still-early...
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Pending journey
October 16, 2015 - The local milkweeds have fed what few Monarch butterfly adults and multicolored caterpillars were around this summer, an...
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The end of the blues?
September 19, 2015 - The butterflies are rapidly becoming fewer and farther between, and on a number of recent forays, the only lepidopterans...
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Bedraggled
September 15, 2015 - In attempting to put together each year's natural history phenology, I'm always on the lookout for the firsts and lasts...
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Way-past-Spring Azure
September 03, 2015 - The wild asters are putting on a great show, and a number of bumblebees and butterflies are coming by daily to admire an...
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Frits after dark
August 28, 2015 - By day, the Great Spangled Fritillary procession, the best I've ever seen, continues, although it's starting to slow dow...
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Silver-spotted spectacular
July 16, 2015 - I'd figured on zeroing in on moths for the upcoming National Moth Week festivities, but on today's foray into the Bell C...
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Beautiful newcomer
June 18, 2015 - This is a Red-spotted Purple butterfly, and one of the first of these beauties to put in an appearance. I discovered it...
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The first fritillary
June 10, 2015 - The first bellflowers of the year have opened in the meadow across the street, and where there are campanulas, there wil...
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Sweet William after rain
June 02, 2015 - The rain eased up late in the afternoon, too late for a long walk, but with a little bit of sun shining through the clou...
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The skipper parade starts
May 30, 2015 - On a beautifully sunny day—perfect weather, if not for the looming drought (several days of solid rain would be even mor...
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A genuine pearl
May 22, 2015 - The Phyciodes group of butterflies—a.k.a., the Crescents—are found mostly south and west of us, but one species, the Pea...
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Elfin identified... I think
May 11, 2015 - I went back to the Bell Cedar Swamp refuge in the early afternoon to try to spot more odonates, but, except for one quic...
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Lepidopteran punctuation
May 05, 2015 - I thought today would be the first dragonfly day, and I headed out to the Henne preserve hopeful of coming home with the...
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First lepidopteran on the wing
April 05, 2015 - Easter, of course, is the time of resurrection, but regardless of your religious beliefs or lack thereof, spring is most...
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All gussied up
October 09, 2014 - After way too long an absence—almost two months—I hauled myself back to my natural history "home-away-from-home": the Th...
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Perfect beach day for butterflies
September 28, 2014 - This morning arrived beautiful, sunny, and with mid-summer warmth, and though I had vowed to stay at my desk and write—w...
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A question answered
September 16, 2014 - I spent most of today inside, specifically, inside the computer lab of our local middle school where I had the incredibl...
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The underwings arrive
August 28, 2014 - Underwings, so named as a group because their hind wings are a complete counter to the patterning of their front wings,...
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Butterfly bush as advertised
August 24, 2014 - Butterfly bush is supposed to be a floriferous lepidopteran magnet, and in the plant ads and, no doubt, at White Flower...
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Monarchs at work
August 10, 2014 - I've been trying to get to the Miner Preserve to conduct amphibian, dragonfly, butterfly, and anything else surveys roug...
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