Our Natural Adventures

Tag: insects

  • August 2, 2025 Adventures

    August 2, 2025 Adventures

    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!

    Borden Colony field
    Milkweed at Borden Colony

    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.

    Orange Sulphur
    Courting Clouded Sulphurs (yellow male and white form female)

    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!

    Red-banded Hairstreak
    Snowberry Clearwing Moth
    Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
    Common Buckeye
  • May 3, 2025 – Watuppa Reservation – Fall River, MA

    May 3, 2025 – Watuppa Reservation – Fall River, MA

    We took a trip out to the Watuppa Reservation area in Fall River today. It was a fantastic day to be out. Sunny, mid 70’s or more and just a bit of a breeze.

    Our main target species were Hessel’s Hairstreaks. Their host plant, the Eastern White Cedar is in the area so we had hoped they would be as well. Whenever looking for Hessel’s in MA, it isn’t a matter of “we’re going out to find Hessel’s”, but more of “we are going out to an area they should be, but probably won’t be”.

    But try, we did. And long story short, once again fail, we did.

    Not all was lost though. At first I took us to the wrong area, but there was a powerline cut and those are almost always interesting. This one had several flowering blueberry bushes which are generally butterfly magnets this early in the season. I did find a few nice ones nectaring on them, but nothing TOO special. 3 Eastern Pine Elfins and several Azures.

    Eastern Pine Elfin on high bush blueberry
    Spring Azure on high bush blueberry

    Everything seems to like the blueberry. Several bumblebees and wasps were also on them.

    A yellowjacket enjoying some blueberry

    I even ran into a mound of Allegheny Mound Ants which I hadn’t seen since my days of working on the military base on Cape Cod. These things are nasty little bastards, but super cool.

    A giant mound of Allegheny Mound Ants
    Allegheny Mound ants

    Well, I decided to turn around and walk the powerline down to where I knew we found some fun butterflies last year. Along the way, I found what was (I thought) a bit strange. Seemingly, two different forms of Spring Azure mating. It looks to me that one is form lucia and the other is possibly marginata?

    Mating Spring Azures

    At one point, the path ends and it turns into a swampy area. Since I could see where I needed to go about 100 yards or so ahead, I decided (one of my worst decisions in a while) to go through the swampy area to get there. Well… I won’t do that again. I would say that I made it about 3/4 of the way, but not before ending up to my knee of my left leg in some serious muck with every pull up of my leg making it sink further in. I did eventually free myself, but began wondering if I would run into the skeletons of those less fortunate than myself. I ended up turning around and getting out of there.

    From there, we ended up driving down to the area we were in last year. This year was a bit different from a butterfly species perspective. Last year, I had a White-M hairstreak. This year there weren’t any in this area but one was seen in the previously mentioned, incorrect area. There were several Azures here though, and a Henry’s Elfin which is always fun.

    Summer Azure
    Summer Azure (light blue with white veins)
    The only look I got at the Henry’s Elfin before it flew off.

    Anyways, at this spot, my wife also found a Red-spotted Purple caterpillar on black cherry which is always a fun find.

    Other than these few species and a couple of Juvenal’s Duskywings (pictured at top), not much else was found today. It was a great day to be out and about though!