Second Season a Success

Participants have now adopted 115 survey blocks (77/184 priority blocks and 38 non-priority blocks). In 2024 we had 90 observers report 96 butterfly species in 1,973 complete checklists comprising 7,590 butterfly occurrence records to e-Butterfly.org, our official atlas data portal. Overall, we now have over 3,800 checklists comprising more than 14,000 butterfly occurrence records! Additionally, 1,161 observers reported 7,590 butterfly photo-vouchers to the Vermont Atlas of Life on iNaturalist in 2024 for a total of 13,618 butterfly records.

We'd also like to thank those of you who have helped us with crowd-sourced identifications on eButterfly and iNaturalist. We'd love to have as many folks looking at records as possible to help root out any identification issues or other data problems with checklists and occurrence records.

We have not fully explored the data yet, but we have already had some noteworthy findings. Some species' ranges have expanded or contracted, like Wild Indigo Duskywing's dramatic expansion or the possible extirpation of Silvery Checkerspot, which was last observed in 2005. There have also been new natural history findings and the discovery of two new species for the state.

In July, Terri Armata found a vagrant Sachem Skipper in Wilmington and a few weeks later she found a fresh, male Zabulon Skipper in an unmowed field full of Red Clover just outside of Bennington. This marked the 119th butterfly species known from Vermont. You can explore the checklist and individual species accounts at the atlas website.

Generally, our goal is to record 40 or more species on each priority block before the end of the 5-year survey. There are just over 40 species that we believe are reasonably easy to find on just about any block in Vermont with reasonable effort throughout the growing season.

With 184 priority blocks scattered across Vermont, we have a lot of work to do over the next three years. The good news is we have at least one butterfly record from 150 of the 184 priority blocks. But only a small percentage of them (10%) have 30 or more species recorded on them so far. We have a lot of priority blocks (red on map) that need to be adopted and fully surveyed over the next three years. Recruit your friends or talk to your local library or nature center to schedule a Butterfly Atlas workshop with our biologists.

You can help even if you don't adopt a block. You can be a "block buster". Pick a day and travel to an under-surveyed priority block and spend the day surveying butterflies. We will have a few interns joining our biologist Allie Radin next year to help with the block-busting efforts too!

Click on map for larger view.

Terri and Susan Hindinger, VCE Executive Director, at an atlas field trip in July.

Terri Armata Receives the 2024 Julie Nicholson Community Science Award

Since her time as a neophyte butterfly watcher during the first Vermont atlas in 2002, Terri Armata has seen nearly every butterfly species known for Vermont. She has also documented four species new to the state on her way to becoming one of Vermont's most ardent butterfly experts. This year Terri found and documented two new butterfly species for Vermont, marking her 4th state record.

“I remember receiving a letter announcing the first butterfly atlas, and it interested me immensely,” Terri recalled. “What better way to spend time outdoors and contribute a bit to science?” She took on the atlas and immersed herself in butterflies, contributing nearly 1,000 records to the effort. Today, she has tallied thousands of butterfly checklists on our e-Butterfly platform and helped many other community science volunteers with more than 11,000 identifications, too. Terri Armata’s contributions to better understanding the conservation status of Vermont’s wildlife (especially butterflies) have been extraordinary—and for this, the staff and board of VCE are proud to present Terri with the 2024 Julie Nicholson Community Science Award.



The Julie Nicholson Community Science Award honors Julie Nicholson’s extraordinary passion and commitment to birds and wildlife conservation through her many years of tireless work as a community scientist. It is presented annually to an individual who exemplifies Julie’s dedication to the cause of community science and conservation. Visit the website and see who are the other butterfly atlas volunteers that have been honored in the past.

Winter Butterfly Blues? Help Identify Images!

Winter is a great time to break out the field guides and work on your skills identifying butterflies from photographs. Both eButterfly and iNaturalist rely on community-sourced identifications to ensure the accuracy of sightings. Visit iNaturalist or eButterfly and click the ‘identify’ tab at the top of the page. In the location box, search for identifications needed in Vermont. In iNaturalist, you can also filter by “superfamily Papilionoidea” to only see the butterflies in need of IDs (get ready to practice your holarctic azures!). To agree with the observer’s ID, hit ‘agree’ or click the observation picture to provide a different identification or comment.

Remember to follow courteous online ID etiquette: disagree politely, only make IDs you can defend with evidence - don’t rely on the AI, and assume the best intent.

The Growing Season that Keeps on Growing

Even if you’ve hung up your net for the season, it doesn’t mean that your brightly colored, fluttering neighbors have called it quits. Warm days in November and October and late blooming flowers are encouraging butterflies to stay out longer in the fall. Even in early December, you may spot an individual of hardy species like Clouded Sulphur, Cabbage White, or Milbert's Tortoiseshell on a warm day.

While people usually appreciate these last few glimpses of summer, temperatures that break annual patterns can disrupt natural cycles. Warmer temperatures mean range shifts through greater survival of less cold-adapted, typically more southern species like the Eastern Giant Swallowtail and the simultaneous decline of cold-adapted, northern species like the Acadian Hairstreak. Some butterflies, like the Appalachian Eyed Brown, are taking advantage of the warmth to add an extra generation to summer reproduction.

If you follow climate research, you have probably heard of phenological mismatch—when the seasonal timing of biological events (phenology) disrupts ecological relationships (mismatch). The Karner Blue Butterfly has a classic story of phenological mismatch: caterpillars hatch before the emergence of their host plant, Wild Lupine, leaving them with nothing to eat. Like many stories of phenological mismatch, this one occurs in the spring, but changes to phenology in the fall can have just as much impact. For every successful Appalachian Eyed Brown, there are also butterflies, like the Karner Blue, whose attempts at an extra generation lead to frozen caterpillars when they should be snug, diapaused (the insect version of hibernation) eggs. Unfortunately, research on fall phenology is lagging behind spring phenology with half as many research studies being conducted. This is partially driven by a lack of data on these end-of-season events. On the next unseasonably warm day, consider a stroll to one of your butterfly sites to keep an eye out for caterpillars, eggs and adults and report them to eButterfly and help scientists track this fall phenomena.

Explore our flight chart tool and see all the species that have been found flying each week in Vermont.

Log Your Volunteer Hours for Conservation Funding

Established in 2000 by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, State Wildlife Grants (SWG) provide money to states, territories, commonwealths, and others to address wildlife conservation needs such as research, surveys, monitoring, and species and habitat management. Projects focus on the Species of Greatest Conservation Need identified in each State Wildlife Action Plan. The Vermont Butterfly Atlas has been an integral project for these plans and is partly funded by SWG. The 2015 plan included 16 butterfly species as Species of Greatest Conservation Concern. The third update to the plan is due in 2025 and we'll be helping complete it once again using data from this atlas.

Here's where we need your help. The state must match the federal funding. The good news is that your efforts with the Second Vermont Butterfly Atlas count as an in-kind match! You can help match funding by logging into an online portal and entering your survey hours and mileage. Please consider taking the time as soon as you can to help unlock these conservation dollars.

You will first need to gather all of your atlas hours and mileage for each date. This would include any time traveling to a site, surveying butterflies, entering data, or even helping to identify other user's observations. The easiest way to start is to visit your e-Butterfly.org account and collect all the dates and hours you were surveying, visit https://www.e-butterfly.org/ebapp/en/checklists/mychecklists. This may take a bit of time and your best estimate of hours each day is all that is needed, but the reporting requires your sign-off and then our approval too. Once you have all your data, you then sign into the reporting portal the state has created and add all of your information. Visit this link to see the illustrated steps and start adding your's too!

Ask, Discuss, Learn: Join the Vermont Butterfly Atlas Forum

Feel free to start conversations, tell a story about your fieldwork, or ask a question about anything butterfly-related on our atlas forum. There are already many interesting articles and discussions: follow new species updates, find tips & tricks for using the eButterfly mobile app, discover new insects with the Milkweed Specialist guide, and much more.

New this winter: Weekly Butterfly ID Game!

Each week we will post two images. One is the butterfly in question and the other will be an imposter. Can you pick the right one? Join us for this fun game each week on the forum. Here's a sample. Black Swallowtail - Left or Right? Visit the forum, log your answer, and see the species reveal. Oh, and no cheating with eButterfly computer vision!