NY Times Butterflying Article

John Grehan jrg13 at psu.edu
Sat Jun 9 08:21:56 EDT 2001


The following questions were directed to another on the list, but I will make
my comments on some as well:

At 01:10 PM 6/8/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Dear Paul,
>
>Would you actually prefer to encourage thousands, perhaps hundreds of
>thousands to catch & pin butterflies?

If the activity was not detrimental to the survival of the butterflies I 
would certainly have no problem with it. We activity encourage MILLIONS of 
people to kill insects in general and outside habitat destruction or 
pollution such activities do not appear to be problematic for the insects' 
survival.


>Do you consider that a responsible recommendation as a scientist?  As a
>conservationist?

Nothing irresponsible if the above applies. Regardless of any 
anti-collecting philosophy it is unlikely that it would happen (i.e. 
thousands or hundreds of thousands) even if "encouraged". There just don't 
appear to be that many butterfly collecting genes (please excuse the 
preformationism).



>What is your problem with "recommending looking instead of catching?"
>
>The article simply states:   "Butterfly collecting still goes on, some
>of it with a scientific purpose.   But for the leisurely pleasure of
>enjoying butterflies, Dr. Glassberg recommends looking instead of
>catching."

There was something tricky about the nature of the commentary that bothered 
me. There was nothing directly stated against collecting, but there was 
some intimations by association, reference to shooting birds and the 
reaction of bringing a gun today. Recommending looking INSTEAD of 
collecting itself casts an aspersion against collecting. If Glassberg was 
just recommending looking there would be no such intimation.

John Grehan




>                                 Cheers,  Wanda
>
>
>
>Paul Cherubini wrote:
> >
> > Dameron, Wanda wrote:
> > >
> > > A good article you may wish to read:    Cheers, WD
> > > http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/08/living/08OUTS.html
> >
> > I have posted this NABA NY Times article below without permission.
> > Seems amazing that an organization that claims it's purpose
> > is to "increase public enjoyment of butterflies" works so
> > hard to discourage the public from collecting and pinning or
> > breeding and releasing butterflies.
> >
> > Paul Cherubini, Placerville, California
> > ______________________________________________________
> >
> > Butterflying: A Pastime Without Pins
> >
> > By JAMES GORMAN
> >
> > James Gorman/The New York Times
> > Pix of Jeffrey Glassberg, author of a field guide to butterflies, 
> stalking his prey with a lens & a Pearl Crescent
> >
> > We've been butterflying. We've seen Hobomok Skippers, small vivid
> > patches of yellow, brown and orange against the intense blue and yellow
> >  of iris blooms. We've watched a bright yellow, and much larger, Tiger
> > Swallowtail swoop in the distance. We've noted the marks on a Red
> > Admiral's wings and tried to plumb the depths of color in a Red-Spotted
> > Purple.
>
>It has been about an hour since we started prowling meadows at the Ward
>Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River, N.Y., and Jeffrey Glassberg is
>explaining the beginnings of butterflying, which is not at all the same
>as butterfly collecting.  He is not, however, explaining the story in
>linear fashion.
> > Digressions flutter up in his conversation as butterflies rise from the 
> grass.   As he spots each new pair of wings, his thoughts fly off, 
> usually to land on some arcane bit of butterfly knowledge.
>
>"Bird studies started with people  taking shotguns. That's what Audubon
>did. He shot birds.  Then in the 20's. . . . There's another Red-Spotted
>Purple, the Red-Spotted Purple is a gorgeous. . . . So, what happened
>was really optics got. . . . Now  wait a minute, let's go slowly here. .
>. . A lot of butterflies like damp gravel. They come to gravel for
>salts, especially males, because when they mate, a lot of the males pass
>a large amount of salt to the female. A lot of butterflies go to
>excrement. Same idea: salt, proteins."
> >
> > Dr. Glassberg is dressed in the fashion one would expect of a butterfly
> > chaser rumpled hat, binoculars and camera, pants tucked into socks to
> >  fend off ticks. (I didn't take this precaution and ended up having to 
> extricate a tick from my thigh.) But he talks rapid-fire, with absolute 
> confidence and the unsentimental world view of a laboratory scientist. 
> This is no accident, since the doctorate he holds is in molecular 
> biology. Techniques he patented for identifying DNA, and the biotech 
> company he helped form and later sold,  are the reason he has been able 
> to spend full time on butterflies for the last 10 years.
> >
> > Eventually he returns to his point, but not before pointing out a Red- 
> Spotted Purple extending its tongue into the gravel of the path we were 
> walking on salt again. In essence, Dr. Glassberg says, optics developed 
> in World War I resulted in binoculars good enough and available enough to 
> allow the people who liked to look at birds to put away the shotguns 
> favored by Audubon and his colleagues. Birders began using binoculars to 
> spot and identify birds in the 1920's, he says, beginning in and around 
> New York City. Roger Tory Peterson published his first field guide in 
> 1934, and the rest is history. Bring a shotgun along on an Audubon 
> Christmas bird count and see the reaction.
> >
>
>The same thing has been happening with the pursuit of butterflies, says
>Dr.
> > Glassberg.  It started in the early 80's, in New York, with people in 
> the New York City Butterfly Club. One of the members found some pocket 
> binoculars that focused close enough (less than six feet) to make them 
> useful for looking
> > at butterflies. And that, says Dr. Glassberg, was the beginning of the end
> > of the net and pin. Butterfly collecting still goes on, some of it with a
> > scientific purpose. But for the leisurely pleasure of enjoying butterflies,
> > Dr. Glassberg recommends looking instead of catching.
> >
> > The eminent biologist E. O. Wilson put it this way in a foreword to Dr.
> > Glassberg's first butterfly field guide. He wrote that despite his 
> particular  devotion to ants, he was often tempted by the pleasure of 
> butterflies, "but  not to kill and pin specimens." He added: "Most of 
> those who search for butterflies in settled areas have matured to the 
> level of birders. The game now is to find, identify, enjoy -- and leave alone."
>
> > Soon after he helped found the club, Dr. Glassberg started writing 
> guidebooks, with photographs of living butterflies, and he founded the 
> North American Butterfly Association, which now has 4,000 members. This 
> compares to roughly 22,000 members for the American Birding Association. 
> But that's only for now, said Dr. Glassberg.
>
>"I think, I really do, that 25 years from now," he says, pausing in the
>middle to note another Hobomok Skipper, a few other varieties of
>butterflies and a hummingbird moth on a pinkster bush, which by the way,
>is listed as a vulnerable plant (not quite threatened, but worth
>worrying about)
> > by New York State, "I think that 25 years from now butterflying will be
> >  bigger than birding."
>
>The rewards are obvious. Butterflies are beautiful, and they are
>everywhere. They are closely tied to their habitats, so that when you
>learn about them you also learn about the place, its plants and the
>change of seasons. You can pursue them lazily, or obsessively, keeping a
>life list.
>
> > But except for a few large ones, they aren't that easy to see. Many aren't
> > much bigger than a thumbnail. You can stand in a field and see specks of
> > orange, bits of beige, things flitting in the corner of your eye and think,
> > well, there's a lot of something here.
>
>  That's where binoculars come in. With them you see four elegant
>eyespots
> >  on the subtle, dusky wing of a Little Wood Satyr, or the striations on an
> > antenna, or the oily, brilliant sheen on a wing fresh out of the chrysalis.
>
> > "It all depends on your optics," says Dr. Glassberg. "It changes your
> >  view of the world," he says. "Otherwise it looks like nothing out there."
>
> > But when a small skipper fills your lens, Dr. Glassberg says, "It's as
> > big as a tiger." I envision a giant carnivore for a moment, thinking that
> > my guide's passion has gotten away with him, before I realize that he's
>0> talking about a Tiger Swallowtail.
> >
> > There is something profoundly subversive about this change of focus.
> > "Butterflies open up this whole other world," Dr. Glassberg says. "You
> > start looking close." And you see more than butterflies, like a shockingly
> > irridescent green tiger beetle or a damselfly decorated with electric blue.
> > Not to mention dragonflies. Suddenly insects require more attention and
> > thought. Lenses are a great test case for any discussion of how technology
> > can affect culture. Change the way you look at the world and you change
> > the way you think about it as well.
>
> > Butterflies are easy to love, of course. But they're just the 
> beginning. Dr.
> >  Glassberg is editing a series of guidebooks that already include 
> "Dragonflies Through Binoculars." One on damselflies is in the works, and 
> another is planned on caterpillars, which, of course, have their own 
> mysteries.
>
>The caterpillars of some butterflies, the Edward's Hairstreak, for
>instance, spend their days in ant colonies, secreting a sweet liquid for
>the ants, which protect them. At night they emerge from the ground,
>crawl up the trunks of
> > scrub oaks and feed on the leaves. At dawn, it's back to the ants.
> >
> > After 10 years of full-time pursuit of butterflies, Dr. Glassberg shows no
> >  decrease in enthusiasm. While we were looking at damselflies I started to
> > take a step toward them and stopped dead when I heard him say: "Don't
> > move! There's a butterfly by your feet." It was a Pepper and Salt Skipper.
> > "That's a very rare butterfly here," he said. "That's only the second one
> > I've seen here."
>
> > If his enthusiasm is unbounded, so are his plans. The butterfly association
> > is establishing a searchable database on the Web so that butterfliers 
> will be
> > able to send in sightings and come back weeks or years later to find when
> > and where they saw that Pepper and Salt Skipper. A butterfly park in Texas
> > is in the money-raising stage. The association promotes butterfly gardens
> > to attract and support butterfly populations and conservation of butterfly
> >  habitats.
>
> > And then there's the golf initiative.
>
> > "I'm not the world's quietest person," he says, laughing. "So birders are
> > always slapping me around to be quiet. But butterflies don't hear."
> > Therefore, he says, you can talk as much as you like while butterflying,
> > which makes it the perfect corporate outing far better than golf. It's
> > useful for relaxation and team-building, fiercely competitive if you want
> > to keep track of what you've spotted, and yet, compatible with heated
> > discussions of strategic planning and hostile takeovers.
>
>Dr. Glassberg may be joking on this one, but then, maybe not. "I think
>eventually America will grow up," he says, "and give up golf for
>butterflying."
> >
>Taking Wing
>
> > If you live in the East, the guide to begin with if you start 
> butterflying is "Butterflies Through Binoculars: The East," by Jeffrey 
> Glassberg
> > (Oxford University Press), one of a series.
> >
>The books contain photographs and descriptions of butterflies with
> > suggested locations, and recommendations on what sort of binoculars
> > to use, suggesting ones that will focus as close as six feet.
>
> > It's a lot easier to start with a group. The Web site of the North American
> > Butterfly Association ‹www.naba.org ‹ has a list of chapters, links to
> > other butterfly groups, information on binoculars, sightings, butterfly
> >  gardening and a national butterfly count in July.
> >
> >
>
>Wanda Dameron
>Flutterby Press
>LA-NABA, LepSoc, ATL, Lorquin, Xerces
>23424 Jonathan St., Los Angeles, Ca. 91304
>818-340-0365     be496 at lafn.org
>
>
>
>
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