Collecting

cmbb at sk.sympatico.ca cmbb at sk.sympatico.ca
Sun Jun 10 01:17:47 EDT 2001


As someone new to systematically observing butterflies, I made the decision
not to start my own collection.  I would like to believe that the guides now
available should be enough to allow me to easily identify what I am seeing.
If I was to collect any specimen it would not be for myself but for our
provincial  museum.

Last year I netted a Regal Fritillary.  The second to be collected in the
Province of Saskatchewan, but as it turned out the first one from the
province to become part of the museum's collection.  The poor thing was a
stray - out of its territory.  The likelihood that there would be many more
Regal Fritillaries coming this way is tangential at best.

Today  I netted two coppers that I was unfamiliar with so I took them home
and compared them to the pictures and written descriptions in the texts that
I have.  American Copper.  Satisfied with what I had in hand (kept in clear
plastic medicine pill jars) I let them go.  In the evening I happened to
look at our provincial records - only one for American Copper.  I called up
a museum official.  Yes, they would have very much liked to have had the two
that I had so recently in hand.  Without the pinned butterflies, my
observations are of little value to them.

While American Coppers have not been collected here in Saskatchewan-
excepted for one specimen, they have been found north, east, south and west
of here.  They probably pass through on a regular basis.   But that is just
hearsay.

Martin Bailey,

cmbb at sk.sympatico.ca
phone/fax   306 842-8936

102   1833 Coteau Avenue,
Weyburn, SK., Canada.
S4H 2X3







 
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