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First let me put forward my credentials for writing about butterflies. This is the second time that I have been butterfly watching and…..well, actually, that’s about it. A young enthusiast, who blogs under the name of ForestPuffin, introduced me to the discipline when he came to visit at the end of August and I became [...]

Butterflies are often beautiful.  Flowers are often beautiful.  When both are together, as often happens, the level of beauty increases exponentially through some form of natural world legerdemain.  It is impossible to figure out exactly how it happens because it seems like natural beauty would have additive or at most multiplicative powers when combined with [...]

After each of my recent visits to the Fort Tilden hawkwatch platform I have paid a visit to the very busy butterfly bush near the community garden there.  The species breakdown tends to be like that at Floyd Bennett Field, but because there is only one butterfly bush the butterflies are much more concentrated.  Recent [...]

Long have I heard the members of the New York City Butterfly Club extol the virtues of Floyd Bennett Field in terms of the amazing array of Lepidoptera one can track down there if one is so inclined.  On a recent visit with some birders I took time out from prowling the rows of the [...]

My trip upstate this past weekend was about more than family, food, and feathers (though all three of those things figured heavily).  Somehow we also found time to look at a variety of cool insects, and, of the insects, we most appreciated the butterflies.  As regular readers here know, butterfly identification is not my forte, [...]

Sterling Forest State Park in Orange County, NY, is well-known for its breeding population of Golden-winged Warblers, to say nothing of the yearly Renaissance Faire.  But the diverse habitat of Sterling Forest State Park supports far more than Vermivora chrysoptera, lusty wenches and mead-drinking fools; everything from bears to dragonflies find what they need to [...]

I spent a great day on Saturday, 29 May, visiting a variety of parks in Orange County and Rockland County in downstate New York with a fellow Queens birder, Seth, and a Rockland County birder, Gene.  Though, really, to call either of them “birder” doesn’t give a complete picture of what they are about considering [...]

Reserva Mangaloma in Ecuador isn’t just amazing for avifauna, but is absolutely burgeoning with amazing butterflies. From the foothills to the highlands, we were treated to stunning tropical specimens. I may not be able to put a name to these faces (if you can, please do!) but they sure are purty… Yellow-Edged Giant-Owl (Caligo atreus) [...]

I’ve raved about the birds (and beaches) of Jamaica, even highlighting the island’s lovely lizards, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how much I liked its leps. Jamaica offers predictably potent butterfly watching. For example, the island is swell for swallowtail butterflies, with a number of endemics including the largest swallowtail in the [...]

It’s been eight days since my trip on Friday, 3 July, to upstate New York to see the Mississippi Kite and I still haven’t told the full tale of the trip.  That will now be rectified with apologies for the two of you who have been sitting on the edge of your seat constantly hitting [...]

The man who did more than anyone else to put together both the first ever Mesoamerican Birding Festival and the familiarity trip after the birding festival, Robert Gallardo, does more than organize and lead birding tours (though that is certainly a full-time job in and of itself).  He also runs, with his lovely wife, Irma, [...]

Monarch Butterflies, as they do every fall, are heading south for the winter.  Along the coast one can see pretty big numbers of them, especially on days when wind out of the north carries them to the shore.  I am always amazed by long migrations, but it is usually birds I think of when considering [...]

Two of the more recognizable butterflies of the northeastern United States were kindly enough to pause in front of my camera lens of late, the Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus).  Both are bigger butterflies than the skippers I’ve recently seen, and both are strikingly colored and rather common, but, [...]

As I mentioned in my previous post the last visit I made to Forest Park was relatively birdless but the bugs did their best to make up for the lack of birds.  In particular, the area around the reclamation pond was quite buggy, with the water and numerous wildflowers creating quite the habitat for everything [...]

Monday was a well-spent vacation day.  Why?  Well, Charlie was in town and we went birding at Jamaica Bay!  I’ll leave it to Charlie to tell the tale of the birds we saw and didn’t see and stick to three of the insects that we spotted: a fly, a butterfly, and a cicada.  Charlie also [...]

Have you been to Lenoir Preserve in Yonkers lately? Probably not. After all, unless you live in the northwest Bronx or any of the rivertowns along the Hudson, you probably take your leisure in more convenient natural settings. But Lenoir, seat of the Hudson River Audubon chapter, has always been a special place for me, [...]

As a person who is still relatively new to the world of birding I feel that I have made some pretty big strides in figuring out the wide variety of birds that I see and hear. I might not identify them all but I definitely manage to put a name to the vast majority that [...]

The acquisition of a new field guide is always a joyous occasion, signaling either an impending journey or impending answers to old questions. By the latter, I’m referring to those unclosed cases that accumulate any time a nature lover ventures outdoors armed with a camera but not a clue. As you can imagine, my digital [...]

Along with the expected assortment of bird books for Christmas, I received a butterfly guide, specifically the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies. Readers of this blog know that I, like so many birders before me, am developing a growing interest in the invertebrate life I encounter in my travels. Dragonflies and [...]