Why Butterflies?

It’s almost butterfly season again. The earliest butterflies, Mourning Cloaks, commas, sometimes come out in March. It’s time to start looking. When I said as much to a friend she asked what it was about butterflies that drew me. The following is my answer.

I owe butterflies a debt. I discovered them during the COVID lockdown. Work dried up, we stayed home, we were scared. You remember. To give me something positive to think about I took an introduction to butterflies course using a new (to me) technology called zoom. I hoped to be distracted. It worked.

I had never heard of a fritillary. I’d never noticed a skipper. When I blithely identified a Monarch I didn’t know there was a mimic called a Viceroy. But I learned. I walked, I took photos, I studied, (some said I obsessed.)

I decided to make myself a cheat sheet. A few years later that simple cheat sheet has become a field guide: Butterflies of Vermont and their Host Plants.

This brings me to one of two questions that have consumed me recently. The first was posed to me after I described an evening counting amphibians for a citizen science project. The question was simple. “What good is a salamander?”

I was stumped. What does that even mean? I mumbled something about feeding herons and raccoons. I explained that their sensitive skins acts as an early alarm for toxins in the air and water. But her question, asked with sincerity, depressed me. Are we only going to save those creatures that we deem useful? (What good are butterflies?)

A week or so later I read an article by Bryan Pfeiffer* who asked the second question. Can a person love a plant like they love a friend, or a partner? This is a wonderful question. There are many wild creatures that I think of as friends. I leave it to Bryan to answer the question about love, but the idea of having a relationship with wild things, whether plant or insect, cheers me.

What good is a friend? Anyone who has ever had one can answer that question in a myriad of ways. Friends can be frustrating, annoying, or hard work, but if they are a friend they are worth the trouble. And that brings us full circle. What good is a butterfly? Can a butterfly be a friend? If a friend is someone you care about, whose company you enjoy and seek out, whose health matters to you, if that’s a friendship, then yes, butterflies are my friends.

We humans are both loyal and oblivious. We’re willing to fight for our friends, but first we need to recognize them. Being in contact with other species can create a relationship. Perhaps at first it is merely curiosity or even selfishness (what good is this creature?), but in time that relationship might become more.

My goal for the field guide is to encourage friendship between species. I started with butterflies. Now I notice moths and bees, I recognize a few beetles and leaf hoppers. It’s hard to imagine I once thought I was alone on my walks. Now I’m making friends everywhere.

*Bryan Pfeiffer, The Meaning of Love (Chasing Nature: chasingnature.substack.com)

Thanks for looking,


Stay well, be curious, learn things.

Kate

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