April 7 Meeting Follow-up

[Howard Hoople]

Many thanks to everyone who shared in the festivities at the MA Butterfly Club meeting on April 7! Rick Cech provided an interesting context for understanding the remarkable diversity of butterflies in Hungary. 

The auction and sales of club materials (caps, t-shirts, checklists and a site guide) were very successful. One high point for me was having the winning bid on an item I donated to the auction! Is there such a thing as “seller’s remorse” ? I neglected to announce at the meeting that the complete set of Massachusetts Butterflies journals that we offered was donated by Lesley Stillwell. It had been Bob’s set, and I think he would have been very pleased to know that Bill Benner won the bidding for them, and then donated them to the club. So we now have Bob’s journals as as a club resource in Bill’s custody. Thanks so much, Lesley.

There were a few announcements at the meeting that bear repeating:

1. The election of club officers will be conducted before the fall meeting (date to be announced, but probably mid-October). Club by-laws instruct the President to form a Nominating Committee to propose a slate of officers for the membership to vote on. Please let me know if you’re interested in serving on this important committee. 

2. From time to time, we have requests for club members to make presentations in classrooms or other venues. Please let me know if you’d like to help out by making presentations relatively close to your home!

3. Michael Newton reported on the interesting results of last year’s organized search for Hessel’s Hairstreaks. The interesting result, unfortunately, was that we didn’t find any. Our less structured initiative this year will be to try to find Hessel’s anywhere we can! 

4. An Act to Protect Massachusetts Pollinators (H.4041) has been referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means. Contact Barbara Volkle for more information on this significant initiative. On another state legislative front, Nancy Callahan reports that the bill to establish the Black Swallowtail as the official MA state butterfly is still churning through the system!

5. We’ve formed an ad hoc committee to assist Mark Fairbrother in developing criteria for determining whether unusual sightings should be included in the club’s database. Steve Moore and Michael Newton will work with Mark over the next 2-3 seasons to evolve guidelines for managing unusual reports. If you see anything unusual, please let them know.

6. Finally, we’re still hunting for Nancy Lebedzinski’s proper glass casserole cover. If the cover you have just looks a little off, contact Nancy at  nle...@charter.net .  She promises that she’ll let us know if anything "pans" out! That in and of itself should be sufficient incentive for you to take another look at the glass lid you took home! And if anyone donates it to next year’s auction…..

And now the 2018 season begins… (if it stops snowing)

Best,

Howard

Howard Hoople

President

Massachusetts Butterfly Club

how...@massbutterflies.org

(978) 475-7719

(978) 604-0454 cell