Butterflies

My biggest hobby is butterflies - especially the European butterflies (except moths), of which I also have a collection. It is so exciting that all my holiday every year is spent on trips around Europe to look for butterflies. Sometimes I travel alone and sometimes together with a colleague. I have travelled together with both Danish and foreign colleagues - or amateur lepidopterists, as we prefer to be called. I have especially travelled together with a Belgian lepidopterist several times in southern Europe.
I am regularly in contact with lepidopterists in Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Spain and Greece. Some of these I learned to know by meeting them "by coincidence" on the butterfly biotopes around Europe. The contact with these people is made primarily through the Internet (e-mail). It is an easy, quick and effective way. We mainly do the following:

• Exchange of information about good biotopes
• Exchange of general experiences
• Reports about the results of our trips
• Planning of future trips

My interest caught me seriously, when I in 1982, at the age of 10, was together with the family on a holiday to the northern Adriatic coast in Italy. The first years in the 1980's, until about the age of 18, the age was a natural limitation to the range of activities. The family holidays were spent at beach resorts at the Mediterranean in southern Europe, where I was able to explore the nearby butterfly fauna. Here I found many commoner species which were however interesting because my interest was still quite new. But often I was dreaming myself to the inland mountains whose bluish silhouettes I could often see from far. There must be a lot of butterflies not to be found in the densely populated coast zone, I thought. But in 1990 the family holiday took me to Lake Garda in northern Italy, where there is a splendid mountainous nature with a very rich butterfly fauna in close proximity. I visited the nearby mountain massif of Monte Baldo a few times with lots of butterflies as result.
After 1990 I was able to realize my dreams of making my own planned trips around Europe. Since then it has just gone ahead.

Beside this I have made shorter (one or a few days) excursions in Denmark.

See photographs of butterflies here.

I and many of the Danish lepidopterists I know are organized partly in a country-wide society, Lepidopterologisk Forening, partly in regional societies. My regional society is Nordjysk Lepidopterologklub. Here I have a chair in the committee and am the editor of the journal.
I am also a member of the European lepidopterists' society, Societas Europaea Lepidopterologica (SEL).

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Copyright © Morten S. Mølgaard - Last update on September 3rd, 2024