Massachusetts Butterfly Club

                        * * * * 35 Years!!!! * * * *
The Massachusetts Butterfly Club is celebrating our 35th year! To see a brief history of the club and how it began, click here.

                       * * * 2025 Spring meeting * * *
April 5, 2025 - Massachusetts Butterfly Club Spring Meeting
Beyond Flowering Plants: Helping Pollinators Thrive Year Round

Join us for the Spring Meeting of the Massachusetts Butterfly Club!
Mass Audubon Broad Meadow Brook in Worcester
Saturday, April 5, 2025, from 4:30 - 7:00 pm.
Join us at 4:30 PM for a POTLUCK SUPPER, followed by a business meeting, and our speaker.

You can also join us by ZOOM. Register in advance for this meeting: https://bit.ly/4j7gKBt. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. The call opens at 5:00 PM.

Our guest speaker Amy Meltzer will present "Beyond Flowering Plants: Helping Pollinators Thrive Year Round ". This talk includes a brief introduction to the biodiversity crisis, explaining why providing habitat for pollinators is essential for maintaining a sustainable ecosystem. Amy will show that pollinators not only need flowering native plants as food for adults, but also need specialized native plants that provide food for their young. You will learn about the kinds of shelter needed year round for pollinator health and reproduction, and how to manage your landscape to provide it. Amy will also discuss the need for water and the importance of minimizing night light. She will share extensive resources on choosing and sourcing native plants and managing our landscapes to support biodiversity, as well as tips on organizing in your community to create pollinator habitat outside of private gardens.

Amy Meltzer is co-chair of the steering committee of the Mass Pollinator Network, is an active member of Grow Native Massachusetts, and is on the Research Team of Elders Climate Action. She has been researching and growing native plants for over twelve years.

HATS AND TSHIRTS - Our new tees and hats will be for sale at the meeting! Hats are $20, Tees are $25. Click on the following to see color availability:    Hats    Tees    Cash or check only please.
SPRING JOURNAL - The 2025 Spring issue of Massachusetts Butterflies will be available for pickup at by members.
MAS BROAD MEADOW BROOK - Arrive early and explore Massachusetts Audubon Broad Meadow Brook Sanctuary.
POTLUCK SUPPER - Please support our efforts to reduce waste by bringing a place setting for your meal.
Guests are welcome!

          * * * Introducing Peter Loshin, MBC president * * *

I am deeply honored -- and humbled -- to have been chosen to lead the Massachusetts Butterfly Club for the coming two years. While many of you know me from club field trips or my posts to the MassLep listserv, I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself and share my vision for my term of office.

When my spouse, Lisa Wolfe, started raising mostly native plants in a butterfly garden in our front yard in Arlington, about 15 years ago, little did I suspect just how deeply I would fall for butterflies myself. It was gradual for me at first. Almost every good butterfly day brought some new or interesting experience: watching six or eight Monarchs nectaring all day on our Liatris; helping raise Monarch, Black Swallowtail and Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillars; learning to recognize Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillar shelters on our spice bushes.

Soon, almost every sunny day I started to see many other common and not-so-common species. Once I spotted our first Giant Swallowtail in 2012, I understood the power of a butterfly garden to attract unusual and unexpected species. And when I saw my first Common Buckeye at Horn Pond Mountain in Woburn on an MBC field trip, I understood the power of the MBC as a medium for bringing people and butterflies together.

For me, being a member of the MBC has been a gift. It's given me so many opportunities to experience so many of these astonishing creatures in the field, in the company of like-minded folks. As president of the MBC I hope to help others share those experiences, by supporting continued excellence in our field trip schedule, our participation in the July NABA counts and our excellent journal, Massachusetts Butterflies.

In line with our mission of supporting our butterfly populations, I would like to continue the club's efforts in specific ways, including:

• Offer a full schedule of club field trips throughout the state. Our Vice Presidents, Kristin Steinmetz, VP-East, and Carol Duke, VP-West, are responsible for scheduling field trips, and I encourage you to contact them if you are interested in leading a field trip, or have suggestions for new trips for the coming season.
• Add programming to our schedule, in-season and out, related to butterfly life cycles and the native plants that support butterflies in the state. This could take the form of field trips to butterfly gardens or to sites with rich native plant diversity, or off-season virtual meetings to share butterfly gardening knowledge.
• Update and expand the "MBC Guide to Good Butterfly Sites" guidebook, originally published in 2005. This book is full of expert guidance to over two dozen of the best butterfly sites in the state, but it needs to be updated. Contact me if you'd like to help with this effort, either by sharing your insights into one or more of your favorite butterfly spots or by helping work on the project overall.
• Engage with the public about the importance of butterflies and the native plants that nourish them. I hope we as a club can expand our efforts to cooperate with other organizations whose goals mesh with ours, whether it be supporting pollinators, native plants and wildlife. Possible activities include participation at public events and co-sponsorship of field trips and other activities.

Finally, I would like to thank all of the generous club members and club officers who have been unstinting in their support and guidance to me in my own butterfly journey. I'd like to list all of the many club members who have made club field trips so memorable here, but it would be a very long list and I fear I might leave someone off. And FINALLY finally, special thanks to outgoing board members Tom Tyning (president), Elise Barry (treasurer) and Martha Gach (VP-East); to continuing board members Barbara Volkle (secretary) and Carol Duke (VP-West); and to new board members Joe Wicinski (treasurer) and Kristin Steinmetz (VP-East). I look forward to working with all of you in the coming years.

The following towns have no reported sightings from 1990 to 2023: Avon, Hanover, Holbrook, Lawrence, Middlefield, Millville, Plympton, Rockland, Scituate, Tewksbury, West Stockbridge, Whitman.

              * * * Rare butterfly seen after restoration * * *
MassWildlife staff recently discovered a frosted elfin caterpillar at Montague Plains Wildlife Management Area after 2 decades of habitat restoration at the site. This exciting find is evidence that these efforts are paying off. See this link https://www.mass.gov/news/rare-caterpillar-found-after-decades-of-habitat-restoration for more information.

The Massachusetts Butterfly Club sponsors state-wide butterfly activities to promote education, conservation, interpretation, and fun! We invite people of all ages and levels of expertise to attend our meetings, programs, field trips, and butterfly counts and to become members of our club.

If you care about our butterflies and the club's efforts to support them, please consider making a donation to our club.
Click on this link to see how you can donate.

                  *****  Butterflying Code of Ethics  *****
The Massachusetts Butterfly Club has adopted a Butterflying Code of Ethics. You can find the document under Club Information on the left menu.

Sign up to get e-mail from Massachusetts butterfly enthusiasts!

If you wish to receive periodic e-mail messages about butterflies in Massachusetts and to report your own butterfly sightings, consider joining the MassLep list server. Butterfly watchers from around the state send messages listing the butterflies they see, describing butterfly behavior, posing questions, and answering them. Joining the list server is a great way to find out what's flying and to get to know others who share your interests!

If you have questions about MassLep or its operations, send an email to moderator Mark Faherty, msfaherty@yahoo.com. MassLep is independently operated in coordination with the Massachusetts Butterfly Club.

    *****  Report your sightings to our Records Compiler   *****

If you do not report your sightings on MassLep or Facebook and would like to report your sightings to our records compiler directly, you can download the spreadsheet below and send to our Records Compiler.

            Sightings Report spreadsheet

Note: Please DO NOT use this form if you report your sightings on MassLep or Facebook.

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