Austin, Texas, is home to about 170 species of butterflies. It is also the home of the Austin Butterfly Forum, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to butterfly conservation and to enriching people’s lives through butterflies. The Austin Butterfly Forum is a club that organizes field trips, conducts butterfly counts, promotes native gardening, performs conservation activities, and meets monthly for an educational presentation. We are a community of butterfly enthusiasts who also enjoy dragonflies & damselflies, bees, beetles, spiders and arthropods in general, and our meeting presentations span this gamut as well. Join Us!
Meetings are held in the Zilker Garden Center, 2220 Barton Springs Rd., Austin, TX, 78746 at 7:00 PM on the fourth Monday of each month except December.
March 2014 Schedule
Saturday, March 22 – Butterfly Field Trip starting at Zilker Botanical Garden at 9 a.m. Early Monarch discoverers Catalina Aguado and John Christian will be our guests. After Zilker, we will butterfly along Barton Creek and share lunch around 1 p.m.
Monday, March 24 – Butterfly Field Trip starting at Zilker Botanical Garden at 9 a.m. Monarch expert Lincoln Brower will be our guest. After Zilker, we will butterfly along Barton Creek and share lunch around 1 p.m.
ABF field trips are free to our members and $5.00 for non-members. Admission to the ZBG parking and grounds is $3.00 per adult; $2.00 per adult if they live in Austin; $1.00 per child (ages 3-12) and $1.00 per senior (ages 62 and older).
Monday, March 24 – General Meeting (Lecture)- Discovery of the Monarch’s Mexican Overwintering Refugia – Catalina Aguado, John Christian, Bill Calvert and Lincoln Brower will, together for the first time, recount their extraordinary experiences discovering the whereabouts of the Monarch’s overwintering grounds in Central Mexico over the course of several years in the mid-1970’s. 7:00pm
Tuesday, March 25 – Special Meeting (Lecture) – The Grand Saga of the Monarch Butterfly Research by Lincoln Brower. In this lecture, copiously illustrated with photographs ranging from electron micrographs to satellite images, Professor Brower will present a first-person account of his field expeditions and lab explorations, and describe the conservation issues that threaten the butterflies’ unique migration and wintering biology. Professor Brower hopes that his audience will include curious naturalists and ardent conservationists of all ages and backgrounds. 7:00 pm
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Meetings will begin shortly after 7. No charge for evening parking at Zilker. ABF meetings are normally free to the public, but non-members will be charged $10 for each of these two meetings. Note, the Zilker Garden Center has seating for 130, but only parking spaces for 60 vehicles so carpooling will be necessary. Overflow parking is available under MoPac at Barton Springs Road.