Montague bioblitz August 15-16

[Josh]

Howdy folks,

Some iNaturalist users, including Jeremy Coleman and David Matevosian, coordinated a bioblitz last weekend in the Montague Sandplains. Among the more than 900 species documented by 30+ participants were 12 butterfly species:

Eastern Tailed-Blue 12 observations
Gray Hairstreak 4
American Copper 4

Monarch 1
Viceroy 1
American Lady 1
Great Spangled Fritillary 1

Horace’s Duskywing 3
Northern Broken-Dash 2
Tawny-Edged Skipper 1
Peck’s Skipper 1
Skipper sp. (caterpillar) 1

The caterpillar was photographed on Round-headed Bush-clover (Lespedeza capitata).

We also saw one swallowtail on Sunday, a dark-colored one, but it did not land and was not photographed, and we couldn’t identify its species.

The butterflies were among well over 150 total lepidopteran species, thanks to a couple of nights of black-lighting for moths, a few observations of caterpillars and day-flying moths, and lots of leaf miners ID’d by Charley Eiseman, Nate Marchessault, and other participants.

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/montague-plains-bioblitz

Cheers,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose, Ph.D.
Amherst, MA
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/opihiman
https://www.facebook.com/opihi

Writer/compiler, Bird Observer
https://www.birdobserver.org/

Columnist, “Earth Matters”
https://www.gazettenet.com/search?bodysearch=earth+matters
https://www.hitchcockcenter.org/category/earth-matters/

Vice-president, Hampshire Bird Club
https://hampshirebirdclub.org/

Northeast Chapter head, Dragonfly Society of the Americas
https://www.dragonflysocietyamericas.org/northeastdsa