By Ezra Matyas

I have always been interested in insects. Attending the 2026 Washington Butterfly Association (WBA) Study Weekend in Goldendale helped me develop a greater interest in and knowledge of butterflies and moths.

That weekend, I saw more varieties of butterflies in nature than I had ever noticed before. At every stop, we saw Boisduval’s Blue butterflies. Because there were so many everywhere, it was one of the first butterflies that I learned to identify.

David Droppers’s Moth Night event was one of the highlights of the trip. Looking for moths at night was a new experience for me.

Attending WBA’s moth night event boosted my confidence handling moths and talking with people about them. In late July, I attended a Moth Ball event on the Olympic Peninsula. That was their first time organizing a moth event, and they were not very familiar with moths. I was able to help catch moths for visitors to look at up close and share what I knew about them.

My favorite butterfly of the weekend was the Silver-spotted Skipper. It changed my notion of what a butterfly looks like. I always thought of butterflies as being slender and hairless, but Silver-spotted Skippers are chunky and fuzzy, and more like moths. If you see one fly by, it is easily recognizable by the large splatter of silver on its wing.

Thank you for welcoming me into the WA Lepidoptera community and sharing your knowledge with me. I’m really excited to have a new way to experience the natural world.

Special thanks to Dan Dunphy for telling me about the Idie Ulsh Study Weekend Scholarship Program and mentoring me; Carolyn Heberlein for telling me about the scholarship and about the Scarabs Insect Field trip; Liz Kuehn for showing me the Magnuson Park Butterfly Meadow (along with Dan Dunphy) and how to use a butterfly net; and Jon Pelham and Jerry Austin for helping me access the Burke Museum Butterfly collection. Thanks also to everyone who shared beautiful gifts with me; they will always remind me of my first butterfly weekend in Goldendale.

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