Jan. 1999  No. 25

Field Guide To Butterflies
by Mike Quinn

I have just seen the future of "Butterflying" and it is identifiable!!!

Jeffery Glassberg is coming out with a - totally new - Field Guide to the Butterflies of Eastern North America. No more "field guides" to pinned specimens. He shows crisp, clear photographic views of upper and lower surfaces of males and females side-by-side with the same views of similar species. Diagnostic characters are clearly marked. Text and range maps are opposite the color plates. He even includes graphs of species' abundance through time!!!

This field guide is going to totally blow everyone away!!! It will immediately ascend to the top of everyone's field guide want list. It is going to do - far more for butterflying than the National Geographic's Field Guide to the Birds of North America did for birding.

Butterflying will step out of the shadows and into the full sunshine with this guide!

Coming to a store near you in January or February of 1999.

Mike Quinn is the Vice President of the South Texas Chapter of the North American Butterfly Association

Butterfly Debate: What's in a Name?

Jim Edsall wrote: The name "butterfly" probably predates written European history. It has been in common usage since at least 1017 AD - one known early reference to butterflies, and probably long before. The name undoubtedly comes from the common yellow butterflies (Sulphurs) which had the appearance of butter on the wing.

Peter Smith checked into the origin of the word "Butterfly" in Walter Skeat's Etymological Dictionary. Butterfly comes from the Anglo-Saxon *buttor-fleoge*, literally butter-fly. So called from its excrement resembling butter, as shown by the Middle Dutch *boter-schijte* (meaning "butter-fly"), literally "butter-voider", as well as the Dutch *botervlieg* and German *butter-fliege*.

Isn't THAT interesting?

Another writer jumps in. Peter Smith's opinion is indeed interesting, but I believe is fallacious. It make no sense biologically. The only visible excrement from butterflies is the meconium which is voided after emergence from the chrysalis. This is characteristically red and is responsible for the reports of "raining blood".

Jim is on the right track. The name "butterfly" is European and comes from the common yellow butterfly of England which is the Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhami) and not Sulphurs (genus Colias) which are rare immigrants into England. Brimstones have the longest adult life of any British butterfly, emergence in July and the butterfly lives until the following June. Thus it was likely to be seen on any warm day throughout the year. The common name "Brimstone" is the first common name of a butterfly in the British literature, appearing in 1695. Current thinking is that this is the insect to which the name 'butter-coloured fly', later contracted to into 'butterfly', was first given.

My source states that The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word back to 1000 AD, but regards its etymology as obscure.

Incidentally, the first published illustration of a Canadian butterfly was of a White Admiral that decorated a map of Halifax in 1749.

The oldest butterfly in existence is a Bath White collected in Cambridge (UK) in 1702, now preserved in the Dept. of Entomology, Oxford University.

The Northern Cardinal
by Paul Martin

The following is a description of the Cardinal found in the 1936 edition of "Birds of America" which belonged to my parents John and Vera Martin. This is the first of what I hope will be many descriptions from the book and it should be first as it was my mother's favourite bird.

By L. Nelson Nichols:

"The flash of red that comes to view and disappears in other trees is generally the cardinal. There are other red birds but none that frequent the stately southern elms and other large roadside trees as does this most attractive sparrow.

All through the southern plantation country this is the bird that typifies everything that is elegant and chivalric not only to the coloured cotton pickers and plantation labourers, but to the country gentlemen. Novels have been written in which the Virginia Cardinal, the Kentucky Cardinal and the Carolina Cardinal have given a tone of aristocratic elegance to the plots. The bird is indeed a fine specimen of bird character, whether found on a southern plantation or at it's north eastern limit in Central Park, New York City, or at it's western limit in the dingy chaparral of southern Arizona.

The bird is ever cheerful and active and industrious. The young are cared for eagerly by the male while the female is sitting on a second laying of eggs. Nothing daunts the male in his care of the young that he leads out upon the lawns and berry fields. The search for food, the scent of danger and the warnings given to the heedless young are common observations made by people who are attracted to them.

The attention the male gives his mate is very noticeable. He is never fearful to fly about looking after the nest or leading her to some favoured food or singing to her from far up in the tallest tree while she is busy at her toilet down by the brook in the valley and frequently she will answer in a lower note that brings form him a quick response. There is a remarkable charm in the cardinal that brings words of enthusiasm form all who have lived in his county with him and have watched his gracious ways."

All I Really Needed To Know,
I Learned From Noah's Ark

1. Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.
2. Stay fit. When you're 600 years old, someone might ask you to do something REALLY big.
3. Don't listen to critics -- do what has to be done.
4. Build on high ground.
5. For safety's sake, travel in pairs.
6. Two heads are better than one.
7. Speed isn't always an advantage. The cheetahs were on board, but so were the snails.
8. If you can't fight or flee -- float!
9. Take care of your animals as if they were the last ones on earth.
10. Don't forget that we're all in the same boat.
11. When the animal leavings get really deep, don't sit there and complain--shovel!!!
12. Stay below deck during the storm.
13. Remember that the ark was built by amateurs and the Titanic was built by professionals.
14. If you have to start over, have a friend by your side.
15. Remember that the woodpeckers INSIDE are often a bigger threat than the storm outside.
16. Don't miss the boat.
17. No matter how bleak it looks, there's always a rainbow on the other side.