CVC Butterfly Blitz 2022's Boletim

Arquivos de periódicos de maio 2022

24 de maio de 2022

Observation of the week: May 14-21, 2022

Welcome to the first Observation of the Week (OOTW) series of journal posts for the 4th annual Butterfly Blitz!

We will post journal entries like this one on a weekly basis for the duration of the blitz. We choose the OOTW for a variety of reasons—to showcase a rare species, an interesting behaviour in a butterfly or simply an interesting photo! If we chose your observation as the OOTW, we’ll contact you to ask for more information about the photo and observation itself.

We started this year’s Butterfly Blitz with an in-person training session at The Riverwood Conservancy on May 14th. It was great to see everyone who came out and helped us to jump start observations for the year. During our first weekend, participants observed 16 butterflies of 7 different species. Thanks to all who have contributed so far!

The first OOTW is this Silvery Blue observed by Shadow (@ymc1960)–a new participant in the butterfly blitz.

Shadow mentions that one of the other participants caught this butterfly at the end of our group hike. ”When I first uploaded it, I put it as Northern Azure but was doubtful about it as it does look different! Then Stephanie from Riverwood [helped] identify it for me as Silvery blue. So, I corrected it. I am brand new to butterfly observations. Hope to join more of your upcoming events!

What a great start to developing your identification skills, Shadow! We hope to see you back out for more events again as well. The more you observe and identify butterflies, the better you will get at it.

Both the Silvery Blue and Northern Azure are from the same subfamily of butterflies, which helps make them visually similar to a beginner butterfly blitzer. But when you look closely, you can see that the Silvery Blue has well defined black circles on the underside of their grey wings while the Northern Azure has fuzzy brown markings.

Here are some other tricks to help you tell butterfly species apart that look very similar:

  • Use a field guide to help you narrow down species
  • Consider time of year, flight periods, and rarity
  • Look at both sides of their wings, focusing on the patterns and shape of their wings
  • Look up information about their habitat and host plants


Northern Azure (Left) and Silvery Blue (right), both pictures from eButterfly .

To learn more about Silvery Blue butterflies, check out this OOTW from 2020 .

We’d love to see all of you out at events throughout the summer. We’ll update you on events here and be sure to check out our events page.

Written by @kristenvalencia, Program Assistant in Community Outreach, CVC.

Posted on 24 de maio de 2022, 05:18 PM by lltimms lltimms | 0 comentários | Deixar um comentário

Arquivos