What’s the best way to identify butterflies? Well, there are a variety of ways, and each has its own advocates. The easiest way, and the best way for a true beginner on, say, his or her first outing to find butterflies, is to go out with a more experienced butterflier, or perhaps several, who will find them and then identify them for you. A WBA trip is a fine first step. But, of course, pride forbids relying entirely on someone else indefinitely. Then you’re faced with buying or borrowing a net or a camera or both. Oh, yes, you’re eventually probably going to want to have access to a pair of binoculars as well.

All that stuff comes later, though, and assumes you like the quest as much as I did not long ago on my first few outings. Then the fun becomes to find and identify a few species on your own.

I confess I like to chase and net butterflies. It’s exhilarating and challenging and it’s good exercise. Butterflies are quick and elusive; netting them takes practice. It took me several outings before I became any good at it — and I’m no star performer yet. (See the reason for the title of this column? Confession is good for the soul.) Sometimes I can identify the butterfly while it is in the net after I’ve been lucky enough to catch it. More often I must very carefully lure the butterfly into a small plastic cup (designed for just this purpose) while it flits about in the net. Then I compare its colors and markings and shape with the likely pictures in my butterfly guide. Once I’ve identified it, or given up trying if it’s too confusing for me–no disgrace–I carefully let it out of the net near the spot where I caught it.

This “catch and release” method is not to be confused with “collecting.” These days professional lepidopterists are for the most part the only ones who “collect.” They need to kill them in order to study them in detail-for example, in their laboratories. Most of the rest of us abhor killing them. I had been fascinated by butterflies for years but refrained from becoming a butterflier because I understood that identifying them required killing them first. I liked them; I didn’t want to kill them.

Just as that great birder Roger Tory Peterson had to prove to skeptical ornithologists that he could identify birds with precision without shooting them and having them in the hand, so butterfliers have only relatively recently satisfied skeptics that butterflies could be reliably identified without killing them. When I learned this, I signed up for a butterfly course with Idie Ulsh, and I haven’t looked back.

In future columns I’ll discuss other methods that beginning butterfliers like me can use to start identifying butterflies.

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