Butterfly Identification Help
This is where butterfliers from NC and SC report their butterfly counts. Here's the official description from butterfly scientist Jeff Pippen: "This list serves as a forum for butterfly enthusiasts or "butterfliers" to discuss all aspects of butterfly life in the Carolinas, including butterfly finding, butterfly identification, trip reports, butterfly counts, butterfly behavior, backyard butterflying, butterfly gardening, butterfly photography, and butterfly club information. Although I expect most discussion on this list to be about butterflies, moth discussion is welcome also, hence the name "CarolinaLeps" -- leps being short for Lepidoptera, the scientific name for butterflies and moths as a taxonomic group."
We share many species of butterfly with Alabama, and this is one of my favorite places to go for butterfly ID help. Not only do they have a detailed description of each butterfly, but you can also click onto a "Get identification help" page that has arrows pointing to the markings to look for on the butterfly. Why they haven't turned this into a published guidebook is a mystery to me.
"This website is more than just an atlas; it is a compilation of information about all of the 177 butterfly species that have been recorded in North Carolina, as of the end of 2024. This compilation has been updated for the past 31 years."
When butterfliers of NC submit butterfly data to the Carolina Butterfly Monitoring Project, the Carolina Leps listserv, iNaturalist, or directly to scientists Jeff Pippen or Harry LeGrand, it ends up here. This is the place to see where and when a certain species was spotted and reported over the decades.
This is an important place to report butterfly sightings, get ID help and help scientists. However, if you do get a rare butterfly, please obsure the location. Don't help illegal butterfly collectors. Back in the day people would learn their buttterflies by killing them. These days the way to "catch" a butterfly is via photography. You can find me on iNat here.
This is butterfly scientist Jeff Pippen's website. It's got lots of nice information and pics.
I like to use the SEEK app out in the field. It's part of iNaturalist, and I think the iNat app can do the same thing -- but I haven't made time to learn the difference to date. Yeah, that's on my to-do list.
© 2024 Heather Rayburn all text and images