We hit a couple places today because the weather was so perfect! High 70’s with a bit of a breeze and full sun. You can’t really beat that for a butterfly day.
We started that day at the Westfield Conservation Area in Taunton, MA. It’s only the second time we have gone there, and really we were just checking for wooly alder aphids on the alder trees to see if there could be a population of Harvester butterflies. There were none, so we have to assume there is not a population there. There were a few species flying, but honestly not as much as I had thought there would be. Probably the best thing we saw was an Evergreen Bagworm moth caterpillar (photo above). We had seen the cocoons quite often, but never the caterpillar. That was pretty cool. Butterflies were few and far between, with a couple Monarchs, Wood Nymph, Peck’s Skipper, Least Skipper being the best sightings. The area is quite nice with very well maintained trails though.
We continued on from there to Borden Colony in Raynham, MA. This is a place we have visited a handful of times over the years. It almost always has several flying species but they are usually hard to get at for a photo. This was not the case today because of the land management that has gone on there this year. I am guessing they were mowing down all invasive grape and other species of plants. This made all the overgrown areas grow back as beautiful fields which were full of flowering Common Milkweed and Joe Pye Weed, Clover, etc. Great butterfly conditions!
Although the butterflies were all basically common species, the numbers were nice and high. Sulphurs topped the chart at well over 50 (probably over 100) with a mix of mainly clouded sulphurs with some orange sulphurs in there too.
There were also over 20 Monarchs, 8 Common Buckeyes, several Eastern tailed blues, 2 Eastern Tiger Swallowtails (first of the year for us) a Red-banded Hairstreak, a Viceroy, etc. All common, but great to see!
Tomorrow’s weather looks to be a bit of the same so we will see what adventures we can get into!
Our Natural Adventures 