Understanding Butterfly Watching

People who watch birds most likely also enjoy seeing the beautiful, graceful butterflies. Where there are flowers, there should be butterflies. Where there are birds, there should be flowers.

Unfortunately, the birds also like to prey upon the butterflies and their caterpillars. The food chain of nature does make this a normal occurrence. So, the more butterflies you attract, the more predators you'll attract. But if you plan for this, you can still manage to have a large butterfly population and be able to enjoy watching some of the predators as well. If you keep food out for your birds, they'll eat less butterflies.

Thick brush gives the butterflies shelter from the rain and gives the caterpillars a place to pupate. Butterflies like windbreaks, edges, and layers; they also like sun to warm their little bodies and places to perch while they sun themselves.

You'll need larvae food plants to lure the females into the garden to lay her eggs. It takes about six weeks for the insect to morph. She lays eggs on a host plant that's then eaten by the caterpillars, which attaches to the stem or branch while it changes from chrysalis to gentle butterfly.

Butterfly watching can be more fun if you have a bountiful supply of them at your own home property. Legumes, mint, parsley, violets, pansies, and flowers from the daisy family are all great choices to help attract and feed your butterflies.

Butterfly watching is a seasonal activity unless you travel to other places when they decide to migrate. You can enjoy their company year-round if you keep a home that allows them to flourish and provides the proper temperature and food sources. They'll need plenty of room to fly, too. The area must be kept as natural as possible to maintain their optimum health.

You can buy butterfly gardens in a kit to help you get a start on your own collection of butterflies. These kits are sold for $20 and contain a habitat, a certificate, larvae, special food, and instructions. Please don't think you can just buy any butterfly kit, then turn them out into the wild or into the city and expect them to survive. The environment where you release them must contain the proper food sources, climate, and protection from predators.

There are at least six different main families of butterflies: skippers, gossamer wings, brush-footed, swallowtails, whites and sulphurs, and metalmarks.

You can buy wildflower seeds specifically for your region. The different regions include the Northeast, West, Southeast, Northwest, Midwest, and Southwest parts of the United States. Of course, butterflies survive and thrive in different parts of the worlds as well. A mix for all regions of North America costs from $19 to $27 per pound in some places. You can purchase butterfly bushes at $8 per bush. Fruit trees can cost $20 per starter tree and up.

You don't need a big yard to have a butterfly garden. You can create a small one on your patio if you live in an apartment. It can be as large or as small as you choose to make it, but remember that the bigger the area, the better your chances and the more butterflies you'll be able to enjoy.