Trip report: Sedge Meadows in Wayland, 2026-06-28

[Peter Loshin]

There were 23 of us in all on this morning's field trip to Sedge Meadows in Wayland, mostly from Wayland and nearby towns, along with five MBC members -- Dolores Price Marvin St. Onge, Bette Robo, Lisa Wolfe and myself -- and Ava Maurer and James Maurer, working on Ava's documentary about MBC.

We started at the parking area off Moore Road, where we saw a Monarch and a Silver-spotted Skipper, along with numerous Cabbage White. The first leg took us along the outer perimeter road, to a stand of Hemp Dog Bane where Silver-spotted Skippers and an Eastern Comma had been seen last week -- but this morning we saw nothing but more Cabbage White.

We lost about half of our group at that point, but the rest of us carpooled to the south meadow parking area on Glezen Lane. Over the next hour and a half we circled the south meadow and saw a good variety of butterfly species, as well as at least 4 Viceroy (probably) caterpillars.

Overall, today we saw:

10+ Cabbage White

12 Clouded Sulphur

1 Orange Sulphur

10 Silver-spotted Skipper

1 Banded Hairstreak

3 Monarch

1 European Skipper

1 American Lady

1 Red-spotted Purple

2 Red Admiral

3 Bronze Copper (1m and 1f)

3 Eastern-tailed Blue

1 Summer Azure

3 Peck's Skipper

1 Zabulon Skipper

4 Viceroy (caterpillars)

A total of 16 species, 57+ individuals.

Community members had a great time, and did well at spotting some of the more interesting butterflies we saw.

Peter Loshin