It also includes the "catch and release" of butterflies.
There are clubs, handbooks, checklists, and festivals devoted to the activity.
The Canada Day and Fourth of July annual butterfly count, a census of species by butterfly watchers throughout North America, is an example of citizen science.
A person can watch butterflies almost everywhere but some well-known butterfly-watching areas include Costa Rica, the Amazon Basin, and sub-Saharan Africa.
Projects in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands, North America, and other countries provide a framework for reporting butterfly sightings in an attempt to understand the factors that threaten or favor European butterflies.