Butterfly book and supplies info needed...

[Anne Kilmer]

What we're doing in Florida is having the school children plant
"butterfly gardens." These collections of nectar plants and larval host
plants attract plenty of local butterflies, and children can obwerve egg
laying, the development of caterpillars and so forth, in nature ...
where dramatic events can happen to them. This, too, is educational. 
There's no reason not to take a few caterpillars into the classroom for
closer observation, and practice at keeping accurate records. 
There's no reason not to collect a few adults, for practice mounting and
observing. In fact, off-season butterflies reared in a classroom make
fine practice specimens, and there's no sense in releasing them into a
snowy landscape.
We have children planting and studying at hospitals, nursing homes,
churches and shopping malls, state and county parks, vacant lots ...
wherever an area has been scraped bare by "progress", the children can
claim it for their gardens. 
It doesn't take long before the "butterfly garden" becomes a wildlife
garden, and the birds and beasts flock around. 
Now we're learning to fine-tune our environmental gardens, preserving
and restoring scrub, wetlands and other special habitats. 
In such a situation, random collecting is frowned on (you might be
netting Maude, who is my personal friend), but supervised collecting can
be a large part of the study and maintenance of these habitats. 
Obviously this doesn't mean that everyone is enlightened. We still have
the highschool biology teacher whose assigned "bug collection" merely
requires that 50 assorted bugs be pinned into a cardboard box.
We've had kids bring such a "collection" to the Mounts Building for the
Master Gardeners to identify (for free, for fun). Hopeless, of course. 
When I was a sophomore in highschool, we watched Mother Gregory pith a
frog. (You take a dissecting needle and poke it through the frog's brain
and down its spine. It dies.)She had read a book, so she knew how. I do
not think she had ever handled a frog before, and the book did not
mention that the frog wouldn't like it. 
It was pretty traumatic for all of us, and most of us begged for the
frog's life, but we needed to see how the heart continued beating ...
and I'll admit that I've never forgotten it. 
I think kids need to spend a lot of time with living animals. Handling
and dissecting dead ones is also necessary, and, if we intend to eat
meat, maybe we should have killed an animal and eaten it ... once, at
least ... so that we know how we really feel about that. 
As for whether it's OK for kids to kill insects to study them, any time
the pesticide companies turn their sprayers into pruning hooks and the
farmers hang up their helicopters, by golly, I'll be right there with
the anti-collection brigade. (And the lion will lie down with the lamb
...) Meanwhile, words like hypocricy, sentimentality and so forth are
going to creep into our conversations. 
We need millions of kids to care passionately about insects, if we are
going to continue having a nice assortment of the latter. There are a
lot of good ways of producing such kids, and one of them is teaching the
kids to collect insects and and mount them. 
 I happen to prefer field studies, myself, but there's room here for all
of us.
Anne Kilmer
South Florida
Kurt Jacobs wrote:
> 
> Randy,
> 
> It is a great idea to teach children about lepidoptera, and hands on study
> will keep the attention of younger minds.  I have to wonder though, are
> these children exceptionally gifted, because to take it to the level that is
> beyond most high schoolers may be a bit overwhelming.  Most modest
> collectors will admit that it takes years to learn how to properly mount
> lepidoptera to what an experienced entomologist would consider
> "professional".  Many collectors with any love of the environment who hold
> collections feel that taking butterflies or moths without using the proper
> mounting and storage techniques is just throwing away a living animal.  It
> is a waste.  Many lepidopterists also feel that people who hold collections
> and are not affiliated with a university or museum or such are also wasting
> the environment, even if they house a collection that rivals the most
> respected.  If noone learns or sees the collection but the collector it is
> truly a waste.  In your case, however, your students would greatly benefit
> from seeing some mounted insects.  The children would not most likely know
> if they were taking a female regal fritilliary or a male great spangled
> fritilliary until after it had been killed.  So to rush right out and start
> collecting insects at age 10 is wrong.  NOOOO, but it would be nice if the
> children learned respect for the fauna and if they could get a sense of what
> type of collecting is proper.  Collecting etiquette.
> 
> My suggestions would be to get some donated mounted specimens from a
> lepidopterist.  Have the children raise some living butterflies that they
> collect.  Maybe have a butterfly house for a couple caterpillars that
> children find.  Catch and releasing butterflies after identifying them is
> also a better way to find out you have a threatened species then to see it
> dead in a jar.
> 
> I have no problems with collecting, mounting and storing lepidoptera, but
> arent children in 4th grade a little young to be doing the work that college
> students sometimes have trouble learning?