Amazing Butterfly Facts

• Butterflies, also known as winged flowers, can taste with their feet and they can hear and smell with their antennae. 
• A butterfly cannot harm anything because it is unable to bite or chew.  It only has a tongue called a “proboscis” that curls and uncurls like a party blower to sip nectar.
• The name “butterfly” means “scale wing.”
• A butterfly’s feathery scales come in all shapes and colors.  The combination of veins and scales make the butterfly able to fly and glide.

In fact, we have learned a lot from these creatures.  Can you guess which insect may have inspired these inventions?

• gliders
• tunnels
• helicopters
• hammocks
• flashlights
• tents
• needles
• nets
• camouflage
• straws
• apartment houses

Butterfly Wings

There is another eason why butterfly wings are special.  Whether you are looking at the smallest butterfly (a dwarf blue), which is 1/2 inch in size, or the gigantic white birdwing butterfly (over 12 inches tall), every one is different.  The patterns on the butterfly wings are as individual and unique as snowflakes, there are no two that are exactly alike. 

To examine the butterfly wings, you will need a microscope or a magnifying glass. 

Making Your Own Magnifying Tool

If you don’t have a magnifying glass, how about making your own magnifying tool?  It’s actually very easy.  What you need is a clear plastic egg or trinket holder (the kind that comes out of toy machine), or a clear plastic soft drink bottle.  If you pour a little water into the bottom of one of these and then hold it over a bug or some of the words in a book, you will see them better.

On the lookout for Butterflies?

Another place to look for butterflies is in shrubs and trees where they often will go to form their chrysalis, which is the case that holds them as a pupa.  Butterflies also like to gather near mud holds to drink and to dance.  When the weather is bad, these delicate bugs take cover in the leaves of nearby trees or flowers.

Bug Riddle:  Who Am I?

I am one of the few insects that molt or shed my skin five times.  My small size is a mere 1/4 inch and makes it very easy for me to hide inside crevices and cracks.  I hunt for food at night where you lay your head.  Who Am I?

Answer:  gub deb (backwards)

Atrracting Wildlife-Planting In Containers

Geraniums easily grown in containers, are a great way to lure butterflies and hummingbirds, such as the female rufous hummingbird seen here.  Place the containers on a deck or patio so you can enjoy them up close.

Container Plantings

Imagine the excitement of seeing a hummingbird by your kitchen window as it hovers in midair, sipping sweet nectar from a hanging basket brimming with colorful fuchsias, trailing lantana, or cascading geraniums.

Window box gardens filled with nectar favorites like verbena, dianthus, penstemon, and daisies are a delightful way to attract butterflies, hummingbirds, and moths to a balcony, patio, veranda, or deck

Attracting Songbirds

Use containers to grow plants that have an abundance of seeds that are attractive to birds, plants such as rudbeckia, coreopsis, globe thistle, or sedums.

Robins, waxwings, orioles, and other birds that feast on fruits and berries will also be your guests!  They will particularly enjoy the berries of roses, hollies, cotoneaster, and even junipers, all easily grown in large containers!

With few exceptions, just about any plant, shrub, vine, or small tree that attracts wildlife can be grown in a container.  Whether in the form of planters, hanging baskets, or window box gardens, container plantings are a quick and compact way to dish up a portable feast for winged wildlife.

What’s more, that feast can be prepared year-round. if you grow food sources that are available from season to season: 

• Spring Bloom:  annual phlox, calendula, and primrose 
• Summer Sensations:  gernaiums, sunflowers, and petunias  asters,
• Autumn Appeal:  salvia, and ornamental grasses
• Winter Wonder:  Forsythia, pansies, flowering kale, hollies and other evergreens

Container plants occasionally provide shelter as well.  For instance, you can transform part of your yard into a butterfly breeding station by growing host plants such as milkweed or asters in containers.  If you want to attract moths, try roses or azaleas.

Some birds, sparrows, house finches, and wrens to name a few have been known to use hanging baskets as a  place to build their nests.

Nectar and Feeders For Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds seem to like red, and almost all  hummingbird feeders have enough red on them to attract the birds like a magnet.  If you feel you need even more red to help hummers find your feeders the first time, hang some red ribbons from the feeder or nearby twigs, or place the feeder near red flowers. It is not necessary nor preferred to put red dye in the water. 

Once the hummers discover your feeder they will be steady customers and they’ll bring their friends!

Clean feeders are a must, so choose ones that have openings large enough to insert a bottle brush or toothbrush to scrub the inside.  Plastic feeders are generally easier to maintian than glass, and they don’t shatter if they fall.  Buy several small feeders rather than one large one, it takes a lot of hummingbirds making lots of trips to empty a quart-size feeder before the nectar sours and ferments.  And since hummers tend to be aggressively territorial, you will probably attract more of them if you provide a number of feeders and space them in open areas throughout your backyard.

It is comical and entertaining to watch the more assertive hummers declare their territory, but it is best provide enough food for everyone who comes to dinner!

All About A Bee

• There are 16,000 species. Most are solitary insects; only about 5 percent are social bees, the most common being the honeybee. As many as 80,000 of them colonize a single hive.
• Drones—the male honeybees—live only for mating with the queen. If there is a shortage of food in the hive, the workers kick their lazy, gigolo asses out.
• To die for: When drones mate, they die afterwards from a ruptured abdomen. Sex detaches their endophallus, which gets stuck inside the queen. 
• She continues to mate—the drones aren’t terribly smart, apparently—until she collects more than 70 million sperm from multiple males.
• The queen was known as the king until the late 1660s, when Dutch scientist Jan Swammerdam dissected the hive’s big bee and discovered ovaries.
• Someone call Homeland Security! Australian researchers discovered that honeybees can distinguish human faces. The insects were shown black-and-white pictures and given treats for right answers.  Oh, someone did call Homeland Security.
• In the Stealthy Insect Sensor Project, Los Alamos scientists have trained bees to recognize explosives.
• The term “honeymoon” is derived from an old northern European custom in which newlyweds would consume a daily cup of mead, made with fermented honey, for a month.  The term “bee’s knees” was coined by American cartoonist Tad Dorgan, who was also responsible for “the cat’s pajamas,” “the flea’s eyebrows,” “the canary’s tusks,” and (apropos of nothing) “Yes, we have no bananas.”
• During World War I, honey was used to treat the wounds of soldiers because it attracts and absorbs moisture, making it a valuable healing agent.
• Honey never spoils. Ever.
• Bumblebees can estimate time intervals.
• Researchers have found that the insects extend their tongues in tandem with the rhythm of a sweet reward. This aids in the hunt for nectar, whose availability waxes and wanes.
• Melittosphex burmensis, recently found preserved in amber in a mine in northern Myanmar, is the oldest bee known. It lived 100 million years ago.
• After he had pioneered the laws of genetics with pea plants, Austrian monk Gregor Mendel bred a strain of hybrid bees. Unfortunately, they were so vicious he had to kill them.
• The buzz that you hear when a bee approaches is the sound of its four wings moving at 11,400 strokes per minute. Bees fly an average of 15 miles per hour.
• A newly hatched queen immediately kills all other hatched and unhatched queens in the hive.
• The Honeybee Boogie: In 1943 Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch published his study on the dances bees perform to alert fellow workers. A round dance indicates that food is close by; a waggle dance means it is distant.
• Worker bees have strictly regimented roles, including that of undertakers who drag their dead siblings from the hive.
• On the April 1984 Challenger flight, 3,300 bees, housed in a special but confining box, adapted perfectly to zero gravity and built a nearly normal comb. But they didn’t go to the toilet. Since bees excrete only outside the hive, they held it in for seven days. A NASA spokesperson said the space hive was “just as clean as a pin.”
• According to an old wives’ tale, a bee entering your house means a visitor is on his way, and if you kill the bee, the visitor won’t be a pleasant one. Suffice to say, invite that unexpected honeybee guest to sit down to tea.

Yellow Flutters In The Morning

For the past two weeks, I’ve been pleased to watch a little yellow butterfly come and suck from the morning glories, marigolds and petunias in my front yard flower beds.  This little yellow butterfly flutter’s it’s delicate wings, and lands lightly on each bloom, spends 1 second, and moves to the next bloom, until the thirst is quenced and she’s off, fluttering in her wavy back and forth style, over the roof and away.  She comes by routinely, at 8:30 in the morning, stays around for about 5 minutes, and off she flies.  Sometimes I can catch her again in the late afternoon, for another brief sip of nectar.

I feel at peace, watching this little soft-winged creature work her way through the flowers.  I’m glad we’ve planted them, and I thank her everyday, for giving me a moment of sunshine.

-Marisue, the lover of wyngs.