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Post by yorky on Oct 17, 2020 3:38:32 GMT -8
As I've been working from home for the majority of the last 9 months and still suffering from the after effects of a horrendous experience with covid entomology has taken a back seat somewhat. However I have just spread/set 16 agrias/prepona hybrids (whichever part of the world you're from) and started to get around to getting my self caught reference collection into some kind of order. Most if these are locally caught and bred and I'm not too fussy about the condition of the specimens as it's mainly data I've been collecting. There are quite a few forms and abberations in there that I've picked up on my travels that make it even more valuable, to me at least. My collection is split into 6 main divisions, exotic, historic exotic (made up entirely of specimens from collectors such as Fruhstorfer, Meek, Doherty, Pratt brothers, Leech etc), European, historic British, British  and self caught. |
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Post by yorky on Oct 17, 2020 3:40:55 GMT -8
Local satyridae and pieridae Attachments:
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Post by yorky on Oct 17, 2020 3:42:44 GMT -8
Local nymphalidae and satyridae Attachments:
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Post by yorky on Oct 17, 2020 3:44:01 GMT -8
Local pieridae and lycaenidae Attachments:
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Post by yorky on Oct 17, 2020 3:45:11 GMT -8
Local nymphalidae Attachments:
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Post by yorky on Oct 17, 2020 3:46:23 GMT -8
Local lycaenidae, hespiridae and nemeobidae Attachments:
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Post by Paul K on Oct 17, 2020 6:45:25 GMT -8
Self caught material is priceless, even a common species.
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Post by kevinkk on Oct 17, 2020 8:15:27 GMT -8
I don't want to hijack the thread, but what do you mean by "self-caught"?
I never purchase dry material, so everything I net, is technically self-caught.
To me, it's the butterflies or moths that fly into my greenhouse and get trapped, I've had
Hyles lineata, and Papilio zelicaon catch themselves on 3 or 4 respective occasions.
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Post by nomihoudai on Oct 17, 2020 8:20:29 GMT -8
Self caught means caught by the collector. The other ways to get material is to trade or to purchase it. You can also breed specimen. Every way has pros and cons.
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Post by gaspipe on Oct 17, 2020 8:35:20 GMT -8
Thank you for sharing. Nice collection. To me that many of your specimens were caught by you makes it all the better. Anyone can buy specimens ; doing the research to find the correct habitat, catching the specimens and then preparing them is what , in my opinion makes it special .
My prayers on your continued recovery.
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Post by yorky on Oct 17, 2020 9:54:17 GMT -8
Self caught or caught by self ie me
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Post by kevinkk on Oct 17, 2020 15:53:30 GMT -8
Thanks, I suppose I assumed as much. For me, it's self caught then, bred or bought as livestock. I'm not a completist when it comes to my
collection-of insects, and am just lazy enough to not go through the relaxing process for dry material.
But, there are a lot of great things out there that can only be obtained as dry material, maybe if I had more space, I'd change my
mind about it.
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Post by exoticimports on Oct 17, 2020 16:36:21 GMT -8
Self caught material is priceless, even a common species. As can be observed in the Tiger Swallowtail thread, specimens of this common species are of scientific value. Others may not be today, but may well be in the future. Many of my specimens can no longer be found at the point of capture. BTW personal observation, I enjoy photos of one or two specimens better than entire drawers Chuck |
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Post by yorky on Oct 18, 2020 1:51:52 GMT -8
My main motivation in putting this small collection together was that good collecting spots from my local area are disappearing at an alarming rate, housing estates and industrial estates are appearing everywhere. Those areas that are not built upon have already prohibited all collecting and are manned by very aggressive tree huggers.Soon all the species that have a very local distribution will be gone and there will be no record of them ever having existed there at all unless I made a record by capturing a small series with accurate data.
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Post by exoticimports on Oct 18, 2020 6:47:10 GMT -8
My main motivation in putting this small collection together was that good collecting spots from my local area are disappearing at an alarming rate, housing estates and industrial estates are appearing everywhere. Those areas that are not built upon have already prohibited all collecting and are manned by very aggressive tree huggers.Soon all the species that have a very local distribution will be gone and there will be no record of them ever having existed there at all unless I made a record by capturing a small series with accurate data. One of the projects on my list is to visit my childhood collecting sites and take photos of the "now". Sadly, the photos will be housing tracts and mostly-empty strip malls. The field loaded with E borealis is houses, as is the peach orchard where drunken nymphalids congregated. The rolling hill with wonderful speyeria is a defunct Kmart; the valley from which my lights drew saturnids and sphingids is an office park. Look at the distribution maps for Butterfliesandmoths.org for any give species and you'll see two types of location dots- "historical" and "detailed" records, and you'll note that the historical records reach far wider than the recent "detailed" records. Much of this can be attributed to ecological destruction thanks to suburban sprawl. Chuck |
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Post by yorky on Oct 18, 2020 7:07:47 GMT -8
The first picture is a case of specimens that I exhibited at Derby University at an entomological society meet in 2018. All are either abberations or forms which took a considerable amount of time and patience to acquire, or locally rare species. The vast majority of comments I received were "why don't you let them live" or "aren't you cruel " After 2 hours I stopped taking questions and packed up, trying to explain the reasons why it is vital to have reference collections was of no interest to the vast majority because their pea sized intellect and brainwashed views couldn't see it.
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Post by kevinkk on Oct 18, 2020 13:45:14 GMT -8
Trees, one thing I guess you can hug nowadays. I was verbally assaulted one time for catching a butterfly, by what I'd call "a large and
uninformed individual"
Collecting in hobbyist numbers has virtually no impact whatsoever on populations, it's deforestation, housing tracts and sprawling strip
malls that impact things.
I gave up midsummer setting up my UV light at home, where I used to bring in medium and small material, but after the entire area was bulldozed
and littered with 40 foot tall crackerjack second homes, it's all gone, and those are the same people that would call you a "killer" for netting
a butterfly.
Ok, we all like to see living creatures, and it's something I think about in the field when I let things go I just don't need for my collection.
In the field I try to avoid contact with other people, wearing my revolver helps as well.
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Post by yorky on Oct 18, 2020 14:03:58 GMT -8
Can't carry a revolver in the UK so I take my son,just as good a deterrent
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Post by rayrard on Oct 20, 2020 11:19:11 GMT -8
People worry me more than any wild animal encounter, but again I'm not in Africa or Alaska where the animals are worrisome. Humans, although most are nice and can be interested in what you are doing, it only takes one bad one to ruin a collecting day.
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Post by kevinkk on Oct 20, 2020 12:17:43 GMT -8
People worry me more than any wild animal encounter, but again I'm not in Africa or Alaska where the animals are worrisome. Humans, although most are nice and can be interested in what you are doing, it only takes one bad one to ruin a collecting day. People are more unpredictable, and while I have been called names one what was one occasion, by the large and loud individual, I have had interested persons ask what I was doing with a purple light at night, or relate their own experiences in school or camp. That's the paradox I suppose, while we like to talk about what we're up to, it can be a dicey encounter, and the main reason I collect, especially at night in places that people don't frequent, and you can see headlights for a mile. My guess is that others feel the same way in the outdoors, and after dark, tend to keep distance. I have been kicked out of a campground before though, it might have been a state park, but really? I could do the same thing on the other side of the road. |
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Post by rayrard on Oct 20, 2020 20:02:56 GMT -8
I ran into a particularly rude "ranger" (or should I say rent a cop ranger) in a State Park in PA where I had paid the fee and was staying in the camp with my friends. I walked a 1/4 mile down the road to an isolated area away from the campers and put up my light. I was just going to photograph bugs for iNaturalist given the no collecting rules at parks. The ranger comes by and tells me I'm not allowed to be there and I need to pack up in an hour, and he didn't care what I was looking for or why. The most surprising thing is when I asked if he wanted to see what was coming in, he said "I don't care about what's on there... it's just a light on a sheet!". These are the people they are hiring for jobs in PA State Parks these days where they don't give a crap about nature and don't allow people to study it. I bet he just wanted authority to yell at kids for drinking beer on the site.
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Post by trehopr1 on Oct 27, 2020 10:58:38 GMT -8
Yorky, just wondering if you have any particular "favorite" species which you really like to get amongst the many you have shown.
I can say that where I live here in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. I still get exuberant whenever I capture a Tiger Swallowtail, Mourning Cloak, or Red-spotted purple. None of those species are necessarily common in my area (like say cabbage butterflies); so, if you find one at all and its in good shape you REALLY don't want to miss it !
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Post by wollastoni on Oct 27, 2020 11:03:11 GMT -8
People worry me more than any wild animal encounter, but again I'm not in Africa or Alaska where the animals are worrisome. Humans, although most are nice and can be interested in what you are doing, it only takes one bad one to ruin a collecting day. Fully agree with that sentence. And even in places where animals are dangerous, humans are far more dangerous in 99% of cases. |
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Post by yorky on Oct 27, 2020 12:16:06 GMT -8
Polyommatus icarus females, especially the blue forms, so beautiful and variable.
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Post by Paul K on Oct 27, 2020 12:37:35 GMT -8
Polyommatus icarus females, especially the blue forms, so beautiful and variable. P.icarus has been just introduced to Canada few years ago. It has established good colonies in Toronto area. I was lucky to collect one female this summer. |
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and self caught. 
