Today we took a trip up to Woburn, MA to Horn Pond Mountain to look for Juniper Hairstreaks. The weather was nice in the mid 60’s, sunny and a bit windy.
We arrived at around 11:30am and began the hike up the hill to the higher, much flatter ground to the area where we know the Junipers seem to hang out around the cedar trees (their host plant).
Shortly after getting to the area with several smaller cedar trees, we began seeing the Junipers in high numbers! This year seems to have a very large flight of them as the usual numbers are just a few at a time.

I was also lucky enough to find a very fresh White-M Hairstreak on one of the cedars.

We were joined by friends after just a little while and began searching all of the area for whatever we could find. We found 2 Black Swallowtails (photo above), a couple Eastern Tiger Swallowtails that never stopped flying, Many Juvenal’s Duskywings, a couple Pine Elfins, a couple Painted Ladys, a few American Ladys, a Gray Hairstreak, and what we counted to be more than 25 Juniper Hairstreaks.
One Juniper was found to be ovipositing on one of the cedars and I was able to get a photo of her and one of her eggs although both photos are less quality than I would like.


We also saw a mating pair of Junipers!

One of my favorites was a Juniper that we saw on the road. I really like the blue scales that can be seen in the photo.

Overall it was a GREAT day for butterflies!

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