Butterfly Monarchy Club

10/08/2026

🦋 Bringing the wonders of butterflies to Mount Pleasant!

The Butterfly Monarchy Club enjoyed returning to Wild Birds Unlimited in Mount Pleasant for our second presentation on attracting butterflies to the garden.

An enthusiastic audience got an up-close look at caterpillars, chrysalises and live butterflies. A special highlight was watching Pat release a Gulf Fritillary! 🧡

Thank you to owners Danielle and Mark Motley and their two daughters for welcoming us back, and to everyone who joined us with such thoughtful questions and enthusiasm.

09/20/2026

Pat Dunlop, Molly French and I traveled to Dorchester, SC yesterday morning to speak to the Dorchester Beekeepers 🐝 and Gardeners 🪴 Group. Elle Meise, who coordinated our visit, appreciated us sharing our presentation with the group and especially about the importance of milkweed in their gardens.

Several of the photos show the children of the members enjoying our “show and tell” cages of eggs, caterpillars and chrysalises of monarchs, black swallowtails and gulf fritillaries. The joy on their faces and stories about their own experiences was priceless!

09/13/2026

The Butterfly Monarchy Club joined up with the Woodside Trail 🥾Group yesterday morning for our second annual butterfly hike out at the beautiful Silver Bluff Audubon Sanctuary.

Even with the cloudy skies, our group of 30 enthusiastic hikers saw several types of butterflies on the 3-mile hike on the Quail Trail Loop. The butterflies were out in high numbers and we identified Swallowtails (Palamedes & Black), Gulf Fritillaries, Clouded Sulphurs, Buckeyes, a few Sleepy Oranges (with dark brown borders) and many different kinds of fast moving Skippers!

08/22/2026

Urgent Update for Silver Bluff Pollinator Census - Saturday, 22 August 2026

Due to unforeseen circumstances this morning there will NOT BE census forms at the Nature Center.

Please record your count of pollinators from another location and enter your results directly at

Welcome to our brand-new home — you’re in the right place! Same census, same UGA Extension team, same count days: August 21 & 22, 2026. Everything you need is right here — how to count, print a count sheet, upload your counts. Look around and count with us.

08/17/2026

REMINDER: The Great Southeast Pollinator Census is THIS WEEK! 🦋🌸

Friday, August 21 & Saturday, August 22

Participating is easy — simply choose a flowering plant, spend 15 minutes watching it, and record the bees, butterflies, moths and other insects that stop by.

🌼 Anyone can participate — no experience needed!
🐝 Choose a flowering plant
⏱️ Count pollinator visits for 15 minutes
📝 Record what you see
📲 Submit your results online

Every count helps provide valuable information about pollinator populations across the Southeast.

Learn how to participate, download your counting sheet and submit your results here:

Great Southeast Pollinator Census:

Citizen Science at Work

08/10/2026

The Great Southeast Pollinator Census is coming up soon! Book about 20-30 minutes on your calendar either day to help with this citizen-science census. You’ll be glad you did and our important pollinators 🦋🐝🌻 will definitely benefit from all the data collected and analyzed❣️

07/18/2026

As promised, below is the comparison of the last couple of years from the CSRV NABA counts.

Year, Number of adults, Species

2024, 508, 48
2025, 707, 49
2026, 279, 37

The numbers were definitely down this year given the severe drought. Last year’s count also ended early due to a thunderstorm that moved through the area. Compared to the last year we were less than half in numbers.

07/12/2026

Pat Dunlop and I spent yesterday morning with Bob Weeks, our newest BMC member & volunteer, and Count Coordinator, John Demko for the annual CSRV NABA Butterfly Count at Silver Bluff Audubon Sanctuary. We went deep into a meadow and then off the trail into a Carolina bay that is forming to count butterflies. We ended up at the bluffs overlooking the Savannah River which offered a lovely breeze.

We were welcomed by Brandon Heitkamp, Center Director, and our BMC member and Silver Bluff volunteer Linda White.

There are fewer butterflies out this year due to our extreme drought which is very disheartening. We are all hopeful that they will return next year to their normal or higher numbers.

See individual photos for captions and all the butterfly photos are courtesy of Bob!

P.s. will update our totals when we receive the final counts from John.

07/05/2026

What will you discover on the trails at Silver Bluff Audubon Sanctuary? 🦋

Join us on Saturday, July 11 for one of the year’s most rewarding citizen science events—the annual CSRA NABA Butterfly Count ! No experience is necessary, just curiosity and a love of nature.

07/01/2026

A few interesting pollinators visited our backyard today and thought I’d share. See captions below each photo.