Category: Observation Records/Record Keeping
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November Butterflies in the Yakima Valley!
Yakima, November 15, 67°F by David James In previous years, I have been excited and blessed to see butterflies in the Yakima Valley close to Halloween. Orange Sulphurs, Cabbage Whites and Sachem Skippers are often seen flying and visiting the last blooms of Rabbitbrush, right up until Halloween scares them away. To see butterflies in…
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A Symbol of Hope in the Midst of Drought!
By John Baumann Spokane, Sept 3, 2025, approaching 101° F I’d just finished lunch and was walking a bucket of vegetable stuff back to our compost when I spied a fritillary flying slowly and low to the ground in a weedy patch of our yard we call “the north 40”, where native shrubs and volunteer…
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Snow Mountain Ranch, Yakima, Field Trip
September 13, 2025 By David James, Trip Leader Our last WBA field trip of the 2025 butterfly season was held at Snow Mountain Ranch just west of Yakima on September 13. It was a sunny, warm 80 degree fall day and we were treated to eleven species including about 40 Coronis Fritillaries busy feeding on…
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WBA’s iNaturalist Project: Washington State Butterflies
WBA has a new iNaturalist project. You won’t have to join the project to be included – any observation of any butterfly (and some moths) in WA state will be automatically included in the project. So – what? You might be asking. Well, what this does, is it allows you or anyone else interested in…
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Put Another Dime in the Record Machine Part 2
Watching Washington Butterflies with Bob Pyle: Number Forty Four In Part 1 of this essay, we looked at the history and importance of occurrence records for butterflies and other elements of natural history, and the importance of keeping them. This time I will go into a little more detail, in hopes it will prove helpful…
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Put Another Dime in the Record Machine
Watching Washington Butterflies with Bob Pyle: Number Forty-three, Part 1 WopWop, wop, wop wop, adada dada) (Wop Wop, wop, wop wop, adada dada) (Wop Wop, wop-, wop wop, adada dada) (Wop Wop, wop-, wop wop, adada dada) (ShoutShout, knock, yourself out) (Come On yell, yell, loud, and swell) (YouGotta scream, scream, you, know what I…
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My Experiences with e-Butterfly and iNaturalist
I am using both platforms for butterflies this summer, in the absence of organized field trips. Being on the edge of Pugetopolis I have plenty of places to go in the great outdoors where there won’t be crowds, so long as I don’t go anywhere popular. I’m using David Jenning’s County Big Day Challenge as…
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Instructions for using the ‘Butterflies of America’ website
This site can and has proved to be difficult for the uninitiated. I intend that this introduction can remedy that. First of all, navigate to the site – https://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/ There are four buttons (links) on the home page: Introduction – explore authors and the website, a ‘spare time’ endeavor. All America pages – this is…
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Inaugural E-Butterfly Survey
And the winners are: Wait, I am not going to reveal the answers that quick. First, thank you to all who participated! Second, we are still in August and there is also September: get out there and start reporting! We would love to add your name in our next report. We were hoping for a…
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Washington State Butterflies on iNaturalist
WBA has a Project on iNaturalist for those who don’t want to do an actual survey. As of publication time, we have 6 project members, and 52 species posted. Three quarters of our observations are Research Grade, which means they are included in the iNaturalist Research-Grade Observations dataset. Anyone on iNat can download this data…
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Species Lists Wanted
Some of you may be aware that Jon Pelham is feverishly working on a data- base of all of Washington’s butterfly species. We have attached a map of all known California Tortoiseshell records as an example of what Caitlin LaBar is producing from the database. As butterfly season approaches, we would like to ask all…
