The Lone Wanderer
It was wicked-hot, dry, desolate, and extraordinarily beautiful in the desert near the Owyhee River in Malheur County, where I spent a...
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Neil Björklund
- Sep 22
- 7 min
A Very Little Big Deal
Last summer, I wrote about a visit I made to the pumice desert east of Crater Lake, to check up on our population of Leona's Little Blue,...
168 views1 comment
Neil Björklund
- Aug 17
- 12 min
The Great Butterfly Scrounge
Maybe I could blame it on iNaturalist. Well, maybe a little on my friend John, too. Although John and I are probably about even, since I...
233 views2 comments
Neil Björklund
- Apr 4
- 2 min
The iNat Revolution
Welcome to my first Blog post of the year! I can't wait to share some updates from this new butterfly season with you. In the meantime,...
205 views1 comment
Neil Björklund
- Sep 21, 2022
- 6 min
Yes, We have Volcanos!
I've been known to describe my avocation of chasing butterflies in Oregon as a game played on the huge game board of the state of...
142 views1 comment
Neil Björklund
- Sep 15, 2022
- 7 min
Wave the Checkered Flag!
I first started looking for the enigmatic Checkered White (Pontia protodice) back in 2004, at Picture Rock Pass, in Lake County. It was,...
108 views0 comments
Neil Björklund
- Sep 9, 2022
- 7 min
Let's Go Dutch!
Nope, I'm not talking about coffee--I'm talking about the peak in southern Oregon. You know, Dutchman Peak, in the Siskiyous. It was...
129 views2 comments
Neil Björklund
- Aug 28, 2022
- 5 min
Loving Leona
Leona's Blue (Philotiella leona) is Oregon's only known endemic butterfly. It has been found only in the pumice flats created by the...
195 views0 comments
Neil Björklund
- Aug 18, 2022
- 8 min
The Bigfoot of Butterflies
We humans tend to love stories about mysterious critters that may or may not exist or persist out in the wild places. The Northwest's...
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Neil Björklund
- Aug 12, 2022
- 7 min
A Double Scoop of Rocky Road
Back in May I visited a few of the sites where Andy Warren had studied azure blues back in the early 2000's. At several sites, mostly in...
100 views0 comments
Neil Björklund
- Aug 3, 2022
- 8 min
The Art of Waiting
The Nevada Skipper flies very fast and low in treeless habitats on windswept ridges. When the wind is gusting they can just disappear...
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Neil Björklund
- Jun 7, 2022
- 11 min
A Boy and His Butterfly
Earlier this spring, I learned in an unexpected way about an obscure disease called 4H Leukodystrophy. It is an inherited genetic...
348 views4 comments
Neil Björklund
- Apr 29, 2022
- 9 min
Searching for Spring
This year, just when we seemed to be heading for the most severe drought in Oregon history, winter seemed to wake up and say "oh, wait...
155 views0 comments
Neil Björklund
- Aug 15, 2021
- 5 min
Silverspotting
The Oregon Silverspot (Argynnis zerene hippolyta) is a subspecies of the Zerene Fritillary (Argynnis zerene), found along the Oregon...
259 views0 comments
Neil Björklund
- Aug 8, 2021
- 12 min
Puttin' on the Frits
Here in Oregon, as summer pushes on into July and early August, we get into smoke season, but we also get into the season of nymphalids...
216 views0 comments
Neil Björklund
- Jul 14, 2021
- 10 min
The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Checkerspot
I was packing for a trip to the southern Blue Mountains to (hopefully) photograph Garita Skipperlings for the first time, when I got the...
218 views2 comments
Neil Björklund
- Jul 10, 2021
- 8 min
The Tao of Skipperlings
The Taoist Masters of old speak of the principle of Wu wei, or non-doing, as being central to their way of understanding how the world is...
149 views0 comments
Neil Björklund
- Jun 27, 2021
- 13 min
Heat Zombie and the Bakeoven Butterflies
As a second generation native Oregonian, I have always felt some kind of civic duty to photograph the Oregon Swallowtail, our state insect..
273 views0 comments
Neil Björklund
- Jun 6, 2021
- 6 min
Hunting for the Gold
Isn't it curious how sometimes when we are looking for one thing, we often find something else that is equally satisfying?
167 views2 comments
Neil Björklund
- May 3, 2021
- 5 min
Chasing Our Swallowtail
My 2021 field season started quite a bit later than I'd planned, and sadly I had to skip a trip to the Illinois River in April in search...
199 views3 comments
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