Interesting butterfly facts

*** Butterflies visit sunny areas more often than shaded gardens. Create a sunny, butterfly corner in your garden.
*** Butterflies warm the muscles in their wings in sun before they fly every morning.
*** Two of the most serious threats to butterflies is wind and man. Create a windbreak in your garden for your butterflies.
*** Butterflies use mud-puddles like birds use bird baths. Keep a mud-puddle in your backyard for butterflies. Robins will visit it also to get mud for their nets.
*** Leave a weed border in an inconspicuous spot so butterflies will have natural weeds to feed and raise their young on. A perfectly groomed lawn is a "turn off" to butterflies.
*** Butterfly predators include: man, lizards, birds, snakes, spiders, and other insects.
*** Caterpillars are susceptible to viral, bacterial and fungal diseases.
*** The cabbage butterfly is an introduced species from Europe, 1860. Some people consider it a nuisance because it feeds on leafy, garden vegetables. It is difficult to not appreciate its delicate, almost transparent beauty!
*** As a caterpillar, the native Eastern black swallowtail is considered by many to be a pest.
*** Some butterfly larvae absorb toxins from the plants they feed on and become very distasteful to predators.
*** If not interrupted by winter dormancy, the entire butterfly metamorphic process spanning the time period of from egg to adult, requires some four to five weeks to totally complete.
*** Each completed life cycle is called a brood. Many butterflies complete three or more broods every year from spring through fall.
*** On the average, butterflies live only a few weeks. Monarchs live some six or more months. The migratory butterflies like the Monarch have longer life spans.
*** The mourning cloak, spring's earliest butterfly, is non-migratory, but lives some six or so months.
*** Migrating brood monarchs fly some 2,000 miles from Canada to winter ground in Mexico. They ride northeasterly winds and move great distances without expending very much energy. They can literally float on the winds.
*** Monarchs wintering in Mexico do not make the return trip in the Spring. Successive broods move northward until they once again re-populate ancestral ranges.
*** Don't cut down that stand of Queen Anne's Lace. Butterflies use it to lay eggs on, and larvae feed on it.
*** Some butterflies are very fond of verbena, vetch and lantana. Plant some, you'll enjoy it also. It is very colorful.
*** Habit destruction especially in the Florida Keys and Everglades and in many parts of California is the main destructive forces costing butterflies their lives.

Helping butterflies in our back yards, helps bring out the best in us while helping a beautiful insect survive in a often hostile world.

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P.O. Box 155
Black Mountain, North Carolina, USA 28711
A non-profit 501-3-C organization dedicated to wildlife research and education