Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 09/07/2026Aaron's Skipper (Poanes aaroni) was an uncommonly common consolation prize at Bombay Hook NWR in Delaware yesterday on my futile hunt for one of several Ruffs in the coastal marshes. 010
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 06/04/2026Falcate Orangetips are having a good flight year in Maryland. We saw many on our annual spring butterfly count Saturday in Green Ridge State Forest. Three guesses how they got their name. 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 23/03/2026Pretty chuffed to find last Saturday what is apparently only Maryland’s second record for Common Claybank Tiger Beetle. With Barry Marts, who took the pic. You can see why they used to be called “green-margined tiger beetle”! 010
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 09/01/2026Plouff Creek MN butterfly count helps assess Nabokov’s blue populations www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/de... 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 22/12/20252026 horticulture, research, and archivist internships announced for the US National Arboretum; deadline is January 19. leplog.wordpress.com/2025/12/22/u... 001
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 25/10/2025New azure butterfly species named in tribute to slain Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska www.the-independent.com/news/world/a... 010
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 17/10/2025While the prevailing wisdom is that butterfly populations are in steep decline worldwide, a century and a half of observations in Indonesia found -- short term trends notwithstanding -- no overall declines in butterfly species richness on Sulawesi royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... 120
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 02/10/2025One of the new (to me!) butterfly species I was able to observe on my recent Arizona trip, this one from Cave Creek Canyon. Ares Metalmark, Apodemia ares, 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 30/09/2025How rare butterflies show impacts of climate change on South Florida www.miamiherald.com/news/local/e... 020
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 29/08/2025New Study: Cold Winters Stop Species from Moving Northward Due to Climate Change www.idw-online.de/-DRTzAA 010
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 29/08/2025Red-banded Hairstreak is Vermont's 120th confirmed butterfly species for the state's lep fauna val.vtecostudies.org/newsfeed/new... 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 25/07/2025A rather steamy trip to the National Arboretum yesterday yielded this red-banded hairstreak “tail/rubbing” to distract predators with this “false head” complete w faux antennae 020
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 24/07/2025Experts stunned after record-breaking surge in rare butterfly sightings: 'None of us want summer 2025 to ever end' <https://www.thecooldown.com/outdoors/purple-emperor-butterfly-population-uk/> 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 21/06/2025Dozens of Delaware Skippers (an S3 Vulnerable species in the State) today at MD’s Eastern Neck NWR 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 17/06/2025A new report, co-authored by Washington State University conservation biologist Cheryl Schultz, provides a roadmap for recovering butterfly populations across the U.S. xerces.org/publications... 061
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 04/06/2025Eurasian Comma watching the tourists wander past obliviously at the Kew Waterlily House 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 02/06/2025David E. Dix: Kent State scientist details butterfly research, why it matters www.record-courier.com/story/opinio... 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 02/06/2025Variegation is all the rage in the Cruickshank Botanic Garden at the University of Aberdeen, where a Green-veined White (Pieris napi) rests on a variegated hosta 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 02/06/2025Green-veined white was flying in numbers today over the heath at Well of the Lecht in Cairngorms NP. As soon as a cloud obscured the sun, even briefly, the whites would drop like stones into the vegetation. This one is nectaring at the larval host plant, cuckoo flower, Cardamine pratensis. 021
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 27/05/2025Brown Argus on the chalk grassland in South Downs NP (UK) are similarly coloured to female Common Blues but *much* harder to spot 020
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 24/05/2025One of many Green Hairstreaks ( Callophrys rubi, as the name suggests actually an elfin rather than a standard hairstreak) basking in a rare moment of sunshine at South Downs National Park UK 021
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 20/05/2025A fresh second-brood Summer Azure (Celastrina neglecta) egg-bombing a New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus americanus) bud cluster. 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 20/05/2025Northern Cloudywings (Cecropterus pylades) are in flight in western MD now, timed (as usual) with the bloom of various brambles like blackberry and dewberry. Here's one hanging from another nectar source, four-leaved milkweed. 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 16/05/2025First Sachem of the year, this one in my College Park MD yard. Of course, iNat insists on appending "Huron" in front of Sachem (as in "Huron Sachem") which is totally unnecessary as there is NO OTHER SACHEM. 010
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 14/04/2025A confiding Olympia Marble (S2 state rare status in Maryland) hangs out on my finger during the Green Ridge State Forest spring butterfly count yesterday. Note the rosy flush of a fresh individual. Photo credit Frank Boyle. 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 06/04/2025My candidate for the next official addition to the Maryland butterfly fauna list: Gemmed Satyr. Any day now; it's easily within 50 miles southeast and 10 miles or so west. They were flying in Wake Co NC over the weekend. 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 03/04/2025Came down early for the @scitalkofficial.bsky.social meeting in Raleigh for a successful snake safari. Found my lifer Queensnake along the Eno River, a specialist predator on newly-molted crayfish. Here's one at top right above a puppy pile of common watersnakes. 020
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 30/03/2025An early spring State Rare (S2) butterfly, Olympia Marble, in Allegany Co Maryland [Euchloe olympia]. 2025 March 29. 032
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 21/03/2025Chemical ecologist Micah Freedman continues legacy of U of T Monarch butterfly research | Faculty of Arts & Science shar.es/agJYmt 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 24/02/2025RSPB petitionsUK Government; any cuts to the farming budget would be a disaster for farmers and nature.https://www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/news/farming-petition-budget-cuts 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 10/02/2025Smaller arable fields and organically managed crops in the surrounding landscape are key to pollinator diversity in Bavaria's calcareous grasslands, although increasing the size of the habitat is still preferable for pollinator protection royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... 010
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 08/02/2025Butterfly Conservation Ireland questions Ireland's official initiative to preserve Marsh Fritillary butterflyconservation.ie/wp/2025/02/0... 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 30/01/2025Prairie sites in Oklahoma managed with prescribed fire alone had the most diverse butterfly communities in comparison to three other management methods (cattle grazing, bison grazing, or haying in combination with prescribed fire) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 010
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 29/01/2025New Mexico Rare Arthropod Resource website launches to help conserve arthropod species--New website to aid state’s rare, endemic, and threatened insects and spiders news.unm.edu/news/new-mex... 010
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 23/01/2025Strong evidence that numbers of UK butterfly species declined in areas with high levels of nitrogen pollution in the 1990s, yet the overall total number of butterflies was not affected jncc.gov.uk/news/impact-... 010
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 21/01/2025It’s not just animals that make sounds of distress when they’re under attack or otherwise stressed. Plants do too, especially when they are suffering from drought or other adverse environmental conditions. And moths are listening. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 032
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 17/01/2025Editorial: New approaches to modeling for endangered butterfly conservation (Dakota Skipper) www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco... 010
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 22/12/2024"We found no overall change in the number of monarchs over the past few decades" using NABA count data--Federal protection for monarch butterflies could help or harm this iconic species, depending on how it's carried out. www.msn.com/en-us/news/t... 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 27/09/2024Bronze Coppers flying in coastal marshlands in MD. A species of conservation concern for us. #lepidoptera 050
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 16/08/2024Rare butterfly subspecies only found on Pa. military base should be listed as endangered, feds say. Eastern subspecies of Regal Fritillary is the butterfly in question #LepLog phys.org/news/2024-08... photo CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons 010
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 11/05/2024A somewhat early Sachem, Atalopedes huron (nee campestris), on some Peach Drift landscape roses at Patuxent Nursery near Bowie MD this afternoon. #LepLog #lepidoptera 010
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 15/04/2024Over A Century Ago, These Blue Butterflies Inhabited The Sand Dunes Of San Francisco, But Since Then, They Have Been Declared Extinct #LepLog #lepidoptera www.msn.com/en-us/news/t... 000
Rick Borchelt @rickborchelt.bsky.social · 06/12/2023How a US biologist single-handedly saved the California pipevine swallowtail from extinction #LepLog #lepidoptera gn24.ae/106670a4bb96... 000