I love birds. If you’re following this blog, you know that I love to photograph and count birds. But birds are not my sole winged passion. As soon as spring is in sight, I’ll be bugging my friend Craig Marks, who has written THE book on butterflies in Louisiana, to publish the upcoming summer’s butterfly count schedule. I’ll be on as many of those counts as I can manage, time wise.

Thus it was that last July, I participated in the annual butterfly count in Vernon Parish. That count begins at Allen Acres, a B&B run by my friend Dr. Charles Allen and his wife Susan. Charles is a retired botanist–if you can call giving dozens of plant workshops, hosting annual events to take people out in search of wild orchids and such, plus constantly planting butterfly gardens and otherwise caring for their own little natural area “retired.” I go there to learn and have fun at least a couple times a year.

So, the annual Vernon Parish butterfly count begins at Allen Acres then branches out into several nearby areas of the Kisatchie National Forest. Our leader, Craig Marks, is an official compiler for the North American Butterfly Association and the results of our counts are always submitted to them. It’s a form of citizen science and contributes to our understanding of the world we live in and how we humans are affecting our environment.

I’m just realizing that, whereas I always save and can report the statistics from the bird counts I participate in, I haven’t been doing that for butterfly counts. Hmmm. I’ll fix that this summer. In the meantime, enjoy these butterflies from our #July2024 Vernon Parish count.

#YearInReview