As a follow-up to my recent column on butterflies, here are a few more photos showing butterflies with wing damage. Here’s the column in case you missed it.

Our wrinkles, scars and other blemishes make us who we are. They are our story.

The same is true for butterflies. Not all butterflies look like the perfectly drawn or photographed models in field guides. In fact, most of them don’t.

I found this gem during a walk through a field today (Monday, Sept. 4, 2023) in southwestern New England. This black swallowtail clearly favored red clover as it bypassed all the other flowers in the field and landed on every clover it could find.

There’s nothing like hummingbirds to unite and excite North America.

Last week’s column on the timing of hummingbird migration apparently got ranked high on a popular internet search engine and blew up. I was wondering why I was suddenly getting emails from across the country and Canada. An editor from a New England newspaper emailed me to say the story had become the paper’s most popular story of 2023 overnight. The power of hummingbirds, I guess.

Emails came from British Columbia, California, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York and each of the New England states. Even my aunt from Virgina texted me out of the blue to say she was directed to the article as well. Some of the regular For the Birds readers responded as well. I appreciated all the emails. Here is what some of the hummingbird fans had to say:

Carolanne from Atkinson, New Hampshire, said she recently became interested in hummingbirds as her “life has slowly quieted down” with her children now grown. She has more time to sit on her deck and watch the wildlife, and hummingbirds became a favorite of hers. She was amazed that hummingbirds fly across the Gulf of Mexico during migration and wondered why they don’t just remain in Florida. It’s an interesting thought, and researchers are discovering that some hummingbirds do indeed remain in Florida or Louisiana instead of making the trip across the Gulf.

Somehow this story got caught up in the Google machine. I’ve received emails from California, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Indiana, Ohio, each of the New England states, and Canada. Funny how things like that happen sometimes.

One of the editors at The Sentinel told me it’s the most popular story on their website for 2023.

I’ll post the column here in the next day or two.

Saw this future monarch butterfly on my walk this afternoon. The fields were filled with milkweed, but this was the only caterpillar I saw.

Here’s a nice scene I came across today while taking a walk in southern Connecticut. Swallowtail butterfly on ironweed. Ironweed and goldenrod are in bloom together making this Viking fan very happy.

A good summer day at Connecticut Audubon Society Coastal Center at Milford Point. Always good birding, regardless of season.

Here are a few photos of birds keeping cool during hot times. The weather in New England has been muggy with off-and-on rain showers for days now. Hopefully these photos will help you keep cool.