Fly Guy

Yale professor Brian Skinner later told me, over the phone in a refined British accent, "a bit of a story." About 15 years ago, the professor and his wife were staying at the same inn as Howe in Mexico, where Howe's work has taken him more than eighty times. "He discovered that we were geologists," Skinner recalls, "and we discovered that he was a butterfly guy." Howe agreed to take the Yalies into the field with him for a day. Skinner's wife found a large monarch, which Howe volunteered to paint for her. "It's really a beautiful oil painting," says Skinner, who framed the piece and now displays it prominently in his home. "He also sent us proofs for reference books he'd illustrated, and those we've also framed and mounted." But Skinner is neither an entomologist nor a lepidopterist (formal lingo for butterfly guy), and he could not tell me Howe's rank in the canon of butterfly painters.

Mike Quinn, a lepidopterist in San Antonio, Texas, could. He's responsible for booking Howe's upcoming talk at the Texas Butterfly Festival. Howe's paintings, he says, are more than just eye candy. They're known for their stunning accuracy.

"His artwork is based on having a series of specimens he could consult, so he could see how common certain spots were and give you really the most accurate image possible," Quinn says. He also knows why people pay hundreds of dollars for The Butterflies of North America when other authors have penned similar volumes. "It's the specific information he gives on rarities and stray species," Quinn explains. "Other publications will just say a certain species was spotted in January, so, you know, you have to wonder, was it five Januaries in a row?"

When Howe arrives at the Butterfly Festival with his stretching board and easel, he'll be a walking anachronism. Quinn reports that close-focus binoculars, digital cameras and collecting restrictions have rendered Howe's brand of documentation obsolete. "Collecting will always be part of the study of insects and butterflies," Quinn says. "But to collect and mount and label and properly spread a single butterfly the way Howe does, it takes 20 minutes ... having that photo, you can post it to a Web site and send the specimen around the world instantly, and you can let it fly away."

I look back through my copy of Our Butterflies and Moths. In it, Howe takes us on a collecting trip to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. Following an impassioned description of all the butterflies we spot and catch, he chimes in with this:

What do you say we have lunch? Why don't you run down to the car and get our lunches for us? ... Back already? I'm hungry, too ... Isn't the fried chicken delicious?

After sharing some imaginary chicken and washing it down with an imaginary canteen of water, we run off to chase another Western Swallowtail. Our mentor is proud of us.

Though just yesterday you told me that you thought all butterfly collectors were crazy! Now look at you, sweaty, tired and bedraggled, but gratified -- you've become one of us!