Butterflies and Moths

When I walk in the hills, I always have a few things in my pouch- dog items, bear spray, a small wind meter, and a Nikon super zoom camera are my mainstays. I also carry my phone.

For flowers, rocks, and landscapes, I use my phone. For birds, mammals and most reptiles, I reach back and grab the Nikon. One day, a few of years back, I saw a Viceroy butterfly and pulled out the Nikon to get in close. 

I found the result to be very satisfying. So, I started using the Nikon to capture more butterflies. Since that image during the summer of 2021, I’ve taken many hundreds of pictures of butterflies and moths. When it comes to decent images, wildflowers are okay to work with; birds can be difficult; butterflies are simply troublesome. For what it’s worth, Swift Foxes have been impossible for me to get good images of.

Here’s the thing, butterflies typically close their wings when they rest. Moths, on the other hand open theirs. So, getting a decent butterfly image often means taking dozens (and dozens) of bad ones. It also means wandering about in a meadow like a staggering drunk- stopping and looking at the ground, then lurching in an another direction, then staring at the ground again, then kneeling, etc.

Adding butterflies to my efforts, along with birds and wildflowers makes for a nice 8-month ‘field season’. The birding in mid-summer gets a bit monotonous. Wildflowers erupt across the entirety of the warm season. Butterflies also begin increase as the wildflower bloom-boom really gets underway. So it all works. 

I feel like I want to spend 2025 trying to see and document more butterfly and moth species. I’d like to break 100 species for the year- this is my best year yet, and I only have 41 species, so we’ll see how that goes.

I am very grateful for the amazing, beautiful butterflies and moths we have!