Data Nerds

Some of our visitors have noticed a new feature at Butterfly Ridge. On the front of our building are two white boards. This is where we keep track of our butterfly and moth sightings over the course of the season.

We use different colors to represent the different months and which butterflies we observed during each month. This way our visitors can get a sense of the seasonality of many butterfly species as well as just how many species we observe in a given month. We also include in the upper right the data from our most recent butterfly transect. This is part of our commitment to giving visitors an accurate representation of what is happening out on the property. At Butterfly Ridge, anecdotes do not equal fact, actual data equals fact!

We also have a sightings board for our moths. This board has certain challenges associated with it. For example, the butterfly side lists every butterfly species we have documented at Butterfly Ridge. If we listed every moth ever documented at Butterfly Ridge, all 1,100+ species, the moth board would wrap around the entire building! So instead, we have listed our 150 most common species.

However, our moth running totals always represent beyond the most common moths. As of this writing, we are just shy of 600 species for the season thus far. As you can see, June has been our top month for moth activity this year thus far.

One thing to keep in mind however, this board is always behind. On any given mothing night, I will take somewhere around 400-500 photos. It takes time to go through all of those photos and to identify all of the critters in those photos. For example, I am slightly more than halfway through all of my July photos. So, our overall moth species number is currently well over 600 I suspect, just because I am so far behind analyzing photos. I doubt that July has caught up to June in species numbers, but I am sure the difference is much less than the 60 species shown on our board currently.

We are hardcore data nerds at Butterfly Ridge. I hope you will take some time to look at our data and draw conclusions about all of these wonderful lepidoptera that call Butterfly Ridge home!