Thanks to the collaboration of an international team of biologists, entomologists, and computer systems specialists, the e-Butterfly.org platform now offers high-performance tools allowing citizens everywhere to help inventory butterflies around the world.
A rare and elusive butterfly has been discovered for the first time in Vermont, flying this spring at one of the state’s protected natural areas. Bog Elfin, patterned in brown and rust, and no bigger than a penny, had eluded detection in the state until one flew past a Vermont field biologist who had been searching for it for two decades.
Vermonters now have another excuse to get outside on sunny days: to join a statewide survey of the most angelic insects—butterflies. VAL is recruiting volunteers to help search fields and fens, mountains and meadows, and even their own backyards to help document the status of Vermont’s butterflies.
In October iNaturalist user James McNamara photographed a European Peacock Butterfly in a garden and reported it the Vermont Atlas of Life on iNaturalist marking the first state record for this species.