Butterfly lists from Beginner walks

[Blake Dinius]

Just an update on the 3 lists from the walks given this year. Not sure if these should be all separate posts. If so, I can delete and re-post.

Walk 1 (May 11)
Location: Myles Standish State Forest, Plymouth

This was a cold and rainy day. Very overcast. We had 3 people show up. We walked the gas pipeline to Torrey Pond Rd. and lopped back to 3 Cornered Pond Rd.

No butterfly sightings, but not surprising. Still had a good time with folks and talked about the vegetation in the area.

Walk 2 (June 15)
Location: Myles Standish State Forest, Plymouth
14 people showed up for the walk on Father's Day - rescheduled from the Saturday due to rain. We walked through the first field on the Bentley Loop and spent about 1.5 hours there. Milkweed wasn't quite ready to pop. Was hoping to see some Edwards' hairstreaks, but no luck.

1 Silverspotted skipper
1 Southern cloudywing

3 eastern-tailed blues
1 red-spotted purple

7 pearl crescents

3 wood satyrs
3 Indian skippers

Walk 3 (July 12)
Location: Myles Standish State Forest, Plymouth
10 people showed up. We walked through the Bentley Loop to get to the second field along the way. About 80% of the milkweed had already passed.

15 dun skippers
5 monarchs
1 great spangled fritillary - which was interesting, as I hadn't seen one of these in the county in about 6 years. And, never in Myles Standish State Forest. Have a blurry picture, but can clearly see the underside markings denoting Great Spangled over anything similar.
3 eastern-tailed blues

2 wood nymphs

1 banded hairstreak

1 Edwards' hairstreak

Despite the rain and set backs due to weather, the reception of these walks was overall very positive. Looking forward to next year!