Vermont naturist spent 21 years tracking down a tiny butterfly

One man’s 21-YEAR hunt for an ultra-rare butterfly with a wingspan less than an inch: Incredible story of Vermont naturist who spent TWO DECADES trying to track down the tiny Bog Elfin that had never been seen in Green Mountain State

• Biologist Bryan Pfeiffer, 65, has been searching for the Bog Elfin since he was 44
• The small brown butterfly is rare and has never been seen in Vermont before 
• Having definitively spotted the butterfly, he can now fight for its conservation

An entomologist in Vermont who spent 21 years trying to find a particular species of butterfly which has never been recorded in the state finally realized his dream. 

Bryan Pfeiffer, 65, was 44 when he first embarked on the mission to spot a small butterfly called the Bog Elfin, a tailless insect with a wingspan of just under an inch never record in the Green Mountain State. 

They generally take flight during the springtime, from May to June, and are restricted to just the northeastern parts of North America, according to the US Forest Service website.

According to NatureServe, a non-profit that deals in conservation data, the Bog Elfin ‘has likely suffered some long-term declines’ and ‘appears to be absent from most suitable bogs’.

Spotting it in Vermont was so important for Pfeiffer because until it had officially been seen, it was impossible to fight for its preservation.

Bryan Pfeiffer, 65, has been trying to spot the Bog Elfin butterfly in Vermont for 21 years

Pictures is a Bog Elfin, though not the specific butterfly seen by Pfeiffer. The tailless butterfly with a wingspan of just under an inch

Pfeiffer, who has spent decades around the bogs of Vermont equipped with binoculars and a butterfly net, was also part of a team that compiled the first-ever Vermont Butterfly Atlas.

Bog Elfin, however, are hard to find because they spend most of their life high in the canopy of the black spruce trees where they lay their eggs.

‘Every year I felt like my window was closing,’ he told the Boston Globe.

For the last few years, his search was limited to just one bog with many spruce trees but for some serendipitous reason on May 19 he went to a new bog, he told the Globe.

He added that over the years he had experienced a number of false alarms after seeing similar-looking butterflies like the Pine Elfin. But he said on this occasion he knew something was different.

‘I’ve been looking for you for a very long time,’ he told the butterfly as he approached it, he told the Globe.

‘I was overjoyed when he called me because this was exactly how it should have been,’ Josh Lincoln, a retired veterinarian and amateur naturalist who spent time looking for the butterfly, told the Globe.

Pfeiffer spent decades exploring bogs in Vermont equipped with binoculars and a butterfly net

Bryan Pfeiffer uses a net to try and catch butterflies and dragonflies in an undisclosed location in the Northeast Kingdom

‘Whenever I’d search on my own, I’d secretly hope I didn’t find it because the only fitting ending was for Bryan to find it,’ he said.

The historic sighting of the butterfly will now be featured second edition of Vermont Butterfly Atlas, according to Kent McFarland, who is leading the project for the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. 

‘It’s hard to frame just how difficult this challenge was, and how perfect Bryan Pfeiffer was for it,’ McFarland told the Globe.

‘He’s the bog man. He’s at home in a bog, even though most people are quickly driven insane by the ridiculous quantities of black flies and mosquitos.

‘And he’s out there looking for something the size of a penny, and it’s brown, and he’s in a bog where everything is green and brown, and the vegetation is so thick you can’t see two feet in front of you. It’s a frustratingly secretive insect in a frustratingly difficult habitat.’ 

Pfeiffer said that he was not going to state publicly where he found the Bog Elfin in order to prevent people from going to visit. 

In a blog post on his Substack page, Chasing Nature, Pfeiffer noted that the years he spent looking for the butterfly may have been a crucial to his finding it.

‘It takes skill to find a Bog Elfin, to recognize its habitat, to sense where it might perch or seek nectar, to know how it carries itself and how its aeronautics differ from those of other little brown butterflies and moths flying around the bog,’ he wrote. 

Bryan Pfeiffer (right) points out a butterfly as he and Josh Lincoln search for butterflies and dragonflies in the Northeast Kingdom

‘That awareness took me years to fully realize. And I suspect my failures during the first decade or so of searching for Bog Elfins were in part due to ignorance and “user error” – looking in the wrong places and at the wrong time,’ he wrote. 

‘I like to think that the patience, grounding, and skill that come with being a 65-year-old field biologist still count for something, that slowing down in almost every way still counts for something.’

He said that he would keep visiting the bogs of Vermont in the hope of spotting yet more creatures – and that his sighting of the brown butterfly had made Vermont a better place.

He also encouraged others to go out and look for butterflies. Although they may not be able to find Bog Elfins, they can find something very similar.

‘Search for mottled triangles the size of pennies. Only then you might discover an elfin of your own. It won’t be a Bog Elfin, and it won’t take you 20 years to find,’ he told his readers. 

‘It will be a manifestation of time and place. And it will perhaps offer you virtue in a way you had never expected from something as prosaic as a little brown butterfly.’ 

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