Volunteer Spotlight: Sam Jaffe

Town: Readville, MA

Volunteer activities:  Leading butterfly and caterpillar walks, putting on live caterpillar shows at museums and sanctuaries to show off our fantastic native creatures, cataloging the caterpillars that use the blue hills and fowl meadow area.

Favorite Hike:  Hiking up through the lush and very productive ski-slope meadows to the top of Great Blue Hill, wandering the summit trails around the weather observatory and tower, and coming back down the rocky trail to the trailside museum – walking very slowly and finding amazing caterpillars all the way.  This route travels through quite a range of habitats and can turn up an incredible array of interesting caterpillars.  Hiking in the late evening to the top of Buck Hill is another of my favorite walks.

Favorite thing to do in the Blue Hills: Search for caterpillars!  The Blue Hills Reservation offers unique scrubby hill top habitats that are unusual for this part of the state.  The species I find up on the summits are unique and often uncommon elsewhere in the region.  My favorite thing to do in the Blue Hills is to walk slowly, turning over leaves, and discovering creatures I have never seen before!

Learn about Sam Jaffe’s exhibit at the Boston Children’s Museum here.