Things with Wings: Northampton Butterflies

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Northampton Butterflies

This was the best Mass Butterfly Club field trip ever. The Northampton Community Gardens comprise 8 acres of individual garden beds. Some are planted with vegetables, some with flowers, many are combinations of both. The field trip was led by Tom G., who himself has two separate beds in the gardens with thousands of purple verbena plants lined with bright red zinnias. It was a wonderful spot for lots of butterflies (both variety and numbers) and for pretty photographs!

One batch of Tom's Verbena (I told you he planted thousands!)

Red Zinnias bordering Verbena

Viceroy

American Goldfinch

(They liked all the sunflowers in the gardens.)

Monarch (#6 for the year)

Black Swallowtail

ditto

Cosmos

Wild Indigo Duskywing

Black Swallowtail

Silver-Spotted Skipper

Monarch (#7 for the year)

The competition for zinnias was fierce!

Cabbage White (I had to include one!)

Pearl Crescent

Eastern-Tailed Blue

Great Spangled Fritillary

Great Spangled Fritillary on Verbena

American Lady

Great Spangled Fritillary on zinnias

Sunflowers and blue sky!

Future Black Swallowtail

American Copper

Zabulon Skipper (female)

White Turtlehead in the wild

Osprey fly-by

Bluet Damselfly

Eastern Comma

This Eastern Comma was too funny. We had carpooled in 4 cars to some meadows near the Acadia Audubon Sanctuary. We spotted this anglewing in the mud puddle in the middle of the dirt road and stopped to try to ID it. When we got out of our cars it flew off. We looked around a bit and then proceeded to get back into our respective cars at which point it returned to the puddle. We tried getting out again, and off it went! I was able to ID it with my picture.