Silver-spotted skipper butterfly

August 22, 2025

On a warm, sunny afternoon in early April, when it felt like spring might be settling in for good, I went looking for Mourning Cloak butterflies. This butterfly has dark, reddish-brown wings with a lacy-looking yellow edge that reminded someone long ago of the traditional garments worn by people in mourning and they dubbed it a ‘Mourning Cloak’ In Britain, however, they call it a Camberwell Beauty, a name that originated from its discovery in Camberwell, South London in 1748.

**Mourning Cloak butterfly Portman Preserve April 12, 2025**

I spotted my very first “winter” Mourning Cloak a few years ago in late March while there was still snow on the ground! The temperature had climbed to a balmy 65-degrees, but I still didn’t expect to see a butterfly floating languidly over a pile of snow! It seemed so incongruous! Prior to that day in March, I had no idea that some butterflies, like the Mourning Cloak, overwintered as adults!

**Mourning Cloak butterfly three years earlier on the same date and the same location (April 12, 2022 Portman Preserve, Mattawan, Michigan)**

Butterflies that overwinter as adults tuck themselves away in tree cavities, leaf litter, cracks in rocks, loose bark, and the crevices of unheated buildings in order to survive. When they emerge on a warm spring-like day, they feed on tree sap, particularly from oak and maple trees, to regain their strength. If the cold temperatures resume, which they inevitably do, overwintering adult butterflies head back to their hiding places and wait for warmer weather.

**‘Summer’ Mourning Cloak July 9, 2023**

Butterflies that don’t overwinter as adults spend the winter as a chrysalis, a caterpillar, or an egg. Other butterflies, like the monarch, migrate south to find more hospitable accommodations.

When I ventured out in early April looking for a Mourning Cloak butterfly, I was pleasantly surprised to find several of them darting about! I also found a few Eastern Commas, and one tiny Spring Azure butterfly! Spring Azures don’t overwinter as adults like the Mourning Cloaks and the Eastern Commas, but spend the cold winter months as a chrysalis. In late winter or early spring, they emerge as adults, find a mate, lay eggs, and die within just a few days!

**Eastern Comma butterfly April 12, 2025**

**A tiny Spring Azure on April 12, 2025**

After finding these three different butterflies so early in the season, I was hopeful that I would find even more varieties during the month of May. I went to several different nature preserves over the course of that month and managed to find even more butterflies than I did in April, but most of them were very, very small and not particularly colorful. I LOVE finding the bigger, flashier butterflies like the monarchs, fritillaries, and swallowtails, especially when they land on the bright orange butterfly weed, pink swamp milkweed, lavender bee balm, yellow salsify, or the beautiful magenta-colored ironweed. The combination makes for some stunning pictures.

The collection of butterflies I ended up with in May included a Hobomok Skipper, Little Wood Satyr, Pepper and Salt Skipper, Silver Spotted Skipper, Zabulon Skipper, a Wild Indigo Dusky Wing, Red-spotted Admiral, Viceroy, Eastern Comma, and several Pearl Crescents.

In June, I saw my first Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and my first Spangled Fritillary of the season, plus two small butterflies that were different from the ones I had seen in May: a tiny Eastern-tailed Blue, and a little Essex Skipper. Both have wingspans of about an inch!

**Silver-spotted Skipper on Bee Balm June 29, 2025**

July was my very best month for chasing butterflies! There were enough swallowtails, fritillaries, monarchs, viceroys, and red-spotted admirals to keep me happy, and there were a few I hadn’t yet seen during May and June: an American Lady, an Appalachian Brown, a Coral Hairstreak, a Little Glassy Wing Skipper, a Northern Broken Dash, a Northern Pearly Eye, a Tawny Emperor, and an Orange Sulphur. Whew!

**Coral Hairstreak butterfly on Butterfly Weed**

**Little Glassywing Skipper on Bee Balm**

**Northern Broken Dash butterfly on Bee Balm**

August didn’t bring me any new butterflies, but I continued to enjoy the butterflies I had already seen as they fluttered delicately through the various fields of fading summer flowers that I like to visit.

**Black Swallowtail Butterfly on Bull Thistle**

**Eastern Giant Swallowtail on Purple Coneflower**

**Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Ironweed**

**Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, black morph**, **on Bee Balm**

**Great Spangled Fritillary on Butterfly Weed**

If you want to help overwintering insects like Mourning Cloaks and Eastern Commas, you can start by not cleaning up your yard too early in the spring! Leave all that leaf litter beneath your trees and in your gardens. It’s likely to contain overwintering caterpillars, eggs, or adult butterflies. You can also set up a fruit feeding station in the spring with overripe bananas, cantaloupe, or rotting fruit that will provide sustenance for the mourning cloaks and other butterflies that have been overwintering.

To continue enjoying these wonderful butterflies as well as other creatures, we all need to assume responsibility for maintaining as many natural areas as we can, including our own backyards, and refrain from the widespread use of insecticides!

**Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Meadow Salsify**

Habitat loss and the use of insecticides are killing the creatures we love—not just the ones we don’t love!

What saves them, saves us.

June 23, 2025

With all of the terrifying actions of this current administration, my picture walks have become more and more imperative to my mental health. When I’m out taking pictures, I am lost in my own world, focused on those fleeting moments of beauty and joy that, at least for a few hours, give me the illusion of a better world—but even that can be a struggle.

Yesterday, I left the house by 7:00 a.m., before the oppressive heat of the day was expected to settle in, and went for a picture walk hoping to find monarchs, viceroys, or swallowtails flitting about in the fields or perched on newly emerged flowers. They were nowhere to be found!

You don’t have to look hard or long to find proof that we are at a crisis point regarding our butterfly populations.

“A new study published today in Science has found that populations of butterflies across the United States are declining. In addition to dramatic declines for individual species, the study concluded that total abundance of butterflies has declined by 22% from 2000 to 2020. That means that for every five butterflies seen 20 years ago, now there are only four.”

This is both disturbing and alarming. Sadly, the reasons for their decline are all too familiar: habitat loss, climate change, and pesticide use. Almost every creature I love to photograph faces these same challenges. We are stewards of this earth and bear the responsibility for those losses; either through the people we elect, the poisons we use in our own yards, or the habitats we desecrate. It’s on us.

**This Blanding’s Turtle is just one of many creatures whose numbers are in decline due to habitat loss**

On a happier note, my early morning walk was filled with a multitude of much smaller butterflies than the monarchs or the swallowtails– mostly little essex skippers and the slightly larger silver-spotted skippers. I was also delighted to find a large contingent of dragonflies– eight different types to be exact, and one damselfly!

**A tiny Essex Skipper butterfly on Meadow Hawkweed**

**Silver-spotted Skipper on a small Oxeye Daisy**

**Small White butterfly** **on a tiny bit of clover**

The previous day, I had gone on an early evening walk, also trying to avoid the heat of the day and hoping to capitalize on the soft, warm light of the setting sun. Apart from the mosquitoes, early evening is a perfect time of day for nature shots! Everything seems quieter, more relaxed– even the colors quiet down! And there are creatures I rarely see, like sandhill cranes, skittish bunnies, and industrious little muskrats.

**One of two Sandhill Cranes foraging in the early evening light**

**Eastern Cottontail that hadn’t yet noticed me**

**Mama Wood Duck and her eight obedient offspring**

Sometimes, when the whole day stretches before me with no appointments or obligations, I pack myself a snack and go on a ‘field trip!’ Luckily for me, there are at least a half dozen nature preserves within an hour’s drive of where we live and I rotate through them on a regular basis. It’s always fun to go someplace ‘new’ even if I’ve been there before!

**Male Red-winged Blackbird with a damselfly snack**

In the long run, it doesn’t really matter where I take pictures, or what time of day I go, or even if I don’t find something out of the ordinary; it’s the walk itself that’s kept me sane throughout these troubled times, and the connections that have been forged as a result.

Tag: Silver-spotted skipper butterfly

Chasing Butterflies

Troubled Times