Who knew dung-feeding butterflies are lurking in the woods of PEI ? In the first year of the Maritimes Butterfly Atlas in 2010, Donna Martin, an Island naturalist, was successful in finding several woodland dwelling Prince Edward Island species such as the Question Mark and the Gray Comma because she knew enough to look in the woods where few would look. Donna has agreed to share her knowledge of butterflies in an Butterfly Identification and Atlasing Workshop on Saturday July 9th at 1:30 PM at the J. Frank Gaudet Tree Nursery property at 183 Upton Road in Charlottetown.

Sponsored by the Natural History Society of PEI, the workshop will start indoors with some brief information and then move outdoors to a butterfly capturing adventure on the Tree Nursery property. Participants will learn how to identify and collect butterflies and how they can participate in the Maritimes Butterfly Atlas. As this workshop requires good butterfly flight weather, it will be rescheduled to Sunday July 10 at 1:30 PM if it is raining. Please pre-register with Rosemary Curley at 368-4807 as there are only so many nets to go around.

Donna notes “Butterfly collecting is a great hobby and the ability to combine collecting while providing good information is truly gratifying. Collecting can be done with the camera as well as with the net.“ Although butterflies are the best known group of invertebrates, there are still significant gaps in our knowledge of this group in the Maritimes, and especially in PEI. The Maritimes Butterfly Atlas, the first comprehensive and systematic survey of butterflies for the Maritimes, will start to fill this knowledge gap. By harnessing the combined efforts of interested naturalists and conservation scientists, the project will dramatically improve our understanding of the numbers, distribution, and conservation status of butterflies in Prince Edward Island. It will help identify which species are truly rare, and those more common species that have been overlooked in the past. The Atlas will also produce a snapshot of butterfly populations in the Maritimes today and a baseline dataset for the future.

For more information contact: Donna Martin , 436-4063

Rosemary Curley 368-4807, 569-1209