A Great Spring Season 2024

Thank you for all of your amazing work surveying butterflies during the second spring season of the atlas. We had 65 observers share over 2,400 observations on more than 730 checklists tallying 65 species from snow melt to June 20. Overall, we've found 91 species during the atlas! With summer upon us now, the butterfly life is really kicking into high gear. I can't wait to see what we all find over the next few months! Check out the project page at eButterfly to see what others are sharing.

Finding Wetland Skippers

A bit of planning, and wet feet, is warranted if you want to encounter these sedge wetland skippers on your survey block during their short, late June to mid-July flight period.

Dion Skipper (Euphyes dion): Found in calcareous sedge wetlands; host plants are narrow‐leaved sedges such as Tussock Sedge (Carex stricta); adults nectar on Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), Jewelweed (Impatiens sp.), and Swamp Thistle (Cirsium muticum).

Black Dash (Euphyes conspicua): Found in sedge wetlands in southern-most Vermont and in the Champlain Valley. Host plants are narrow-leaved sedges, predominantly Tussock Sedge (Carex stricta), though others are possible. Adults rely on nectar from Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), Jewelweed (Impatiens sp.), and Swamp Thistle (Cirsium pumilum). Associated with the Mulberry Wing.

Two-spotted Skipper (Euphyes bimacula): Specializes in bogs, fens, and marshes where its main documented food plant, Hairy-fruited Sedge (Carex trichocarpa) and Tussock Sedge (C. stricta) are found. Adults nectar on Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata), Blue Flag Iris (Iris sp.), Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), and Spireas (Spirea sp.).

Mulberry Wing (Poanes massasoit): Sedge wetlands in southwestern Vermont, often with Black Dash and Dion Skipper; sometimes found in bogs, fens, and wet meadows. Known host plant is Tussock Sedge (Carex stricta), but there are likely others. Adults nectar on Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), Common Milkweed (A. syriaca), and possibly other wetland flowers.

Broad-winged Skipper (Poanes viator): The Atlantic coastal subspecies feeds on Giant Reed Grass (Phragmites sp.), while the Great Lakes subspecies is found in sedge wetlands where its hosts are sedges (Carex sp.). We have recently been finding them in Phragmites dominated wetlands, so we may be seeing the two subspecies coming together here in Vermont now.

Finding these skippers is always an adventure and often involves very wet feet. You can explore aerial images using online maps, like Google Maps with this block overlay, to see if there are any open wetlands that might fit. Here's an example of one where I found Two-spotted Skipper. You can also look at a map for each species to see if you can resurvey a previously known colony. Just visit the species page and click on the Vermont Records count on the top right.

Seek out wetlands for surveying, and you may get wet, but be rewarded!

Explore Your Block with Online Maps

You adopted a block, and you are now wondering where you can survey butterflies. The first place to start might be on the web. Online maps can help you select some sites to survey. Here are some of the tools we like to use.

• Google Maps with Priority Blocks: Easy-to-use Google map that we often keep bookmarked on our phones so we can see where we are out in the field too.
• Vermont Parcel Viewer: This allows you to look up parcels in your block so you can see who owns them and then get permission to survey butterflies from them.
• VCGI Interactive Map Viewer: This viewer has everything you might need: wetlands, public lands, parcels, land cover/use, and more. You can even upload the priority blocks to the map by downloading this KML, then choosing the menu Data, and then Upload Data. It takes a bit, but this is a rich mapping system for the state.
• Atlas Block Mapper: We keep adding and improving this with more tools (like those mentioned below).

New Tools for Tracking Your Progress

Generally, our goal is to record >40 species on each priority block before the end of the 5-year survey. With 184 priority blocks scattered across Vermont, we have a lot of work to do! We have made some big improvements to our Block Mapper tool. You can now compare what you have found so far on your block to the first atlas, historical data, and more. Additionally, you can select the Rank Blocks button and get a list of all the blocks with more than 40 species (default), or change the number in the box to whatever cutoff you want, like 30 in the image above.

We have also improved our flight chart tool to help you see each week what might be flying. Give it a moment to load as it grabs over 100 thousand butterfly records and builds the chart. It then orders them for the week by prevalence. We have improved our searchable species checklist and account pages, too. As an example, check out one of my favorite species, Milbert's Tortoiseshell, and learn all about its natural history and where it has been found in the state so far.

Check out our new butterfly box scores on the top of the atlas home page. Can you believe that nearly 3,000 people have contributed over 100,000 butterfly records for Vermont? Click on any of the icons and explore the data even more!

The New eButterfly Mobile App

The new eButterfly Mobile app makes it easier than ever to record and create lists and counts of butterflies you find and upload them to eButterfly, a global online database for butterfly records used by thousands of enthusiasts worldwide. This free app helps you keep track of your butterfly-watching in real-time while making your data available for scientific research, education, and conservation. 

The simple and easy-to-use eButterfly Mobile allows you to create and submit lists and counts of butterflies you find on the go. Simply select when and where you are butterfly-watching, and add the butterflies you encounter. When you are finished, your butterfly counts, images, and effort are all shared with your account at eButterfly.

The new app incorporates artificial intelligence, helping users automatically identify butterfly photos taken with their devices. eButterfly, in partnership with the Montréal Institute for Learning Algorithms (Mila), created an advanced image recognition algorithm that has learned to identify butterflies. This algorithm was trained using millions of butterfly pictures to identify unique patterns and characteristics for each species.

Ask, Discuss, Learn: Join the Vermont Butterfly Atlas Forum

Feel free to start conversations, tell a story about your field work, or ask a question about anything butterfly related on our atlas forum. There are already many interesting articles and discussions: how to identify crescents (yeah, it's hard), the latest greatest place for sweep nets, Silvery Checkerspot information, and much more.