Massachusetts Butterfly Club

The Spring meeting of the Massachusetts Butterfly Club was held at Mass Audubon's Broad Meadow Brook in Worcester on Saturday, April 29th. Thanks to Martha Gach and Massachusetts Audubon for allowing us to use the BMB facility. It's a great place for our meetings. It was our first in-person meeting since Fall 2019! Twenty-two members and guests joined us in-person and another fourteen joined us on Zoom. There were some audio issues during the presentations. It was a difficult setup to allow in-person meeting with a Zoom speaker and Zoom attendees. Thanks to Dave Small we were able to make it work. Also, thanks to everyone who stayed around at the end to help clean up.

The food, as always, was excellent. There was a good mix of delicious appetizers, entrees and desserts. The Zoom attendees thought the food was rather bland.

Barbara Volkle gave a membership report. We currently have 177 members which includes 11 out of state members.

Elise Barry gave the treasurer's report. Amazon Smile is discontinuing their program for donations to non-profits based on sales. Also, mentioned were large expense items such as member mailings and printing our journal. We thank everyone who makes contributions to the Club. That is what sustains us.

Thanks to Bill Benner for his efforts in producing the journal. We thank all the contributors of pictures and articles. It makes our journal great. Members that came to the meeting were able to pick up their copy of the latest issue (Spring 2023, No. 60). All other members and subscribers should receive their copy in the mail soon.

New MBC hats and t-shirts were available for purchase at the meeting. There was brisk business at the check-in table. Thanks to Tom Gagnon for working with Pacific Printing on the design of the shirts.

Our guest speaker was Frank Model. He joined us from California via Zoom and presented "Sex and the Single Butterfly". It was an informative talk about various methods for determining the sex of a butterfly. To see a YouTube recording of his presentation, click on https://youtu.be/WpXgOvThMLo.

The date is set for the 2023 Fall Meeting. It will be held on Saturday, October 14, 2023 with guest spreaker Phillip DeMaynder, lead author of the new book on the Butterflies of Maine and the Maritimes.