Brookfield Library Plans 'Butterflies in My Backyard' with Victor DeMasi

From Brookfield Library:

The Brookfield community is invited to join noted lepidopterist and Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History research affiliate Victor DeMasi for a program on local butterflies, scheduled to take place Tuesday, April 12 at 7 p.m. DeMasi will take the audience on a virtual sunny-day walk through his butterfly meadow in Redding. He will feature rare and common butterfly species that he has seen in the 40 years that he's tended his property. He will explain life histories of local species and describe how a butterfly garden promotes a diversity of Aurelian beauties, and his comments will include a discussion of butterflies in the changing environment with a focus on climate change and invasive species. DeMasi will also share a display of specimens from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

DeMasi is a wetland conservation officer in his hometown of Redding and a research affiliate at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven. He busies himself with preserving open space in town and preserving butterflies in the museum. His field work with butterflies contributed almost a thousand citations to the Connecticut Butterfly Atlas. He has contributed articles to scientific publications, and his mark-recapture studies with Swallowtail butterflies was recently cited in the book Swallowtails of the Americas. He has been on multiple study trips to the Amazon forest, Guyana, Nicaragua with his wife, photographer Roanna, and studied the impact of climate change in California.

This free, adult program is sponsored by the library and is also open to interested, older children. Online registration is available. This program is part of the Brookfield Library's "In Your Own Backyard" series.