Mark Wynja

Joined: Sep 14, 2020 Last Active: Mar 28, 2024 iNaturalist Canada

I was first introduced to Birding in the mid 1974 and have been an avid Birder ever since. My best Birding friend was also a butterfly collector. I had absolutely no interest in collecting butterflies until I purchased my first digital camera in 2004. The camera was for photographing birds, but I also used it for 'collecting' images of both butterflies and dragonflies. In 2016 I retired, we moved from Vancouver to Parksville on Vancouver Island, allowing me the free time to seriously chase dragonflies and butterflies. The first book I bought upon arriving on the island was 'Vancouver Island Butterflies' by Mike Yip & James Miskelly, it was instrumental for finding many of the local butterflies.

I had long toyed with the idea of sharing my observations on iNaturalist, but the final push came with the sad news of the passing of Greg Lasley. I met Greg in Austin back in 1991 when he kindly took me and a couple friends to see Black-capped Vireos and Golden-cheeked Warblers. When Greg and his wife Cheryl came to Vancouver we took them out to find some of his target birds. His contributions to iNaturalist are simply awe inspiring. So my New Years resolution for 2022 was to enter all my Vancouver Island dragonfly and butterfly observations in his honor.

In the first weeks of 2022 I uploaded over a thousand historic observations of dragonflies and butterflies dating all the way back to mid 2016. I am very impressed by the 'Identifiers' in this community as to how quickly they reviewed and kindly critiqued my observations.

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