i keep moist bare patches in my garden for the butterfly's to puddle in. plus they get the nutrients from the soil.

try both and experiment...see what happens.

Happy experimenting!

They need something to "stand" on. You could fill it with some sand and keep the sand moist. Or, fill it with some manure and keep it watered, too. They love to sip dung water, heehee! Seriously, they do.

I make lots of puddles when I water, and once the water is absorbed by the material, they will come down and "puddle" in it. But, they can't swim, so there must be some kind of substantial material to absorb the moisture.

Susan

Butterflies rarely come to plain water. Like Susan said...add sand...or preferably something with minerals and salts to it. A large variety of butterflies will puddle along the edges of a pond, cow patty or scat - places where minerals and salts have leeched out of the soil onto the surface.

So adding a little bit of fish emulsion, a piece of a salt or mineral block (like the kind you put out for cattle, deer and other livestock to lick) should help attract butterflies.

We get lots of puddling butterflies on cow patties - more so when the land is extremely dry. When I'm driving around the back pastures and find dried owl or coyote scat on a dirt road I'll pour a bit of water on it (to re-hydrate it) and the butterflies will come to it fairly quickly.

Also cleaned out an old deer blind that was full of owl poo and assorted critters parts left behind by the owls. The butterflies gathered on the ground where I had washed the stuff out. The area stunk like a dead animal but they loved it! EWWWWW!!!

~ Cat

Here is a link that might be useful: Blues, Checkered Skippers, Border Patches & Leafwing Butterflies on scat

All very good replies and shared experiences.

Gimmicks are designed to attract buyers, not necessarily what they claim. But your "bath" is probably serviceable if you fill it with substrate and a nutrient source.

Might help to know that Lepidoptera get all the moisture they need from things like nectar, sap or rotting fruit (depending on species) except in extreme cases along with the carbohydrates, simple sugars, proteins, etc in nectar. When they puddle, they are usually not after the moisture but rather things like electrolytes, salts and other nutrients that are contained in the moisture. They can also "puddle" by regurgitating onto a dry mineral rich medium and then lap it back up with the now dissolved nutrients.

By far the most attractive "puddles" to most leps species are the ones that contain feces/urine, especially from an organism that fed on fish. That also makes these puddles the least attractive to the butterfly gardener if they are down wind of them. If you are uneasy about using the real thing, just make a mash out of fish and keep it moist. Beer mash or soup is a good substitute if rotten fish is too much for your garden. Fruit mash also works well for some species. Almost any grain or cornmeal is a great additive to make the mash, and they add benefits for the leps.

On all the trips to collect leps in the tropics to obtain ovum from, a good way to get a huge assortment of species in a very short time was to pick a spot in a narrow flyway and urinate right on the trail. Literally in a minute they start coming in, and soon you could be engulfed by hundreds of individuals. Add that for most of the species that never come down from the canopy (200' up), its the only way to get them unless you want to try to get up to where they are. Baiting works very well in the tropics, and reasonably well in NA too. It also works very well for the nocturnal fliers too (moths) that won't come to lights. I have several bait traps I made that have hung in trees in many countries over the years.

However you choose to go about it, providing a place for leps to puddle is a huge benefit to them and adds greatly to all the nectar sources you already provide for them. Another benefit is it can also give you lots of very close photo ops as most species will linger at a puddle far longer than on a nectar source.

Have fun.

Thanks for the information Ladobe; it is much appreciated. I am wondering if I can use my cat feces/urine for the leps.

I have read in John Himmelman's book that he uses bait traps (paints it on trees) to attract the nighttime moths. Guess the same thing would work for butterflies?

Of course, you know I'm especially fond of the sphinx and other moths, and not all of them are day flying moths. I keep telling myself I'm going to set up the white sheet backlit by an incandescent or black light to see what I attract here at home. But, by the time its dark, I'm too tired to do it. Gotta make more efforts to do this.

Susan

Susan - Sure you can use your cats tracks for bait. Painting an attractant (bait) right on trees will work, but you have to be right there to attend them and if you try to capture them they may get injured or covered with the bait. Better is to use a tropical bait setup just hung from a tree or pole. They are basically a thin board with an attached plastic bait dish all covered by a net with a tunnel entrance. Don't have to be attended, won't hurt those caught and they can be either released after dertermined or collected without injury or a bait bath to obtain eggs from. I made all of my bait and wild female fertilization traps.

No doubt lighting at night for moths (and many other kinds of organisims) is the best way to find out what nocturnal species visit your area, and to obtain livestock from. Blacklights work for many species, including Sphingidae, but mercury vapor will bring them in from many times further away. Different light spectrums, so using both together brings the biggest assortment. Not all sheets are created equal either - some reflect, some absorb the light. Many species will not come all the way to a sheet, but land short up to quite a ways away from it and sit and quiver their wings. So you learn to "hunt" with your ears as much as with your eyes. Also realize that all nocturnal species have a well set time frame when they fly, from right before dusk to dawn or a little later. Some have a very short time period all the way to some that fly almost all night. And be aware that the lights and the organisims that come to them also attract the predators that feed on them. Usually not a problem if you give them room. But I've done more than my fair share of fast Mesican Hat Dances with lots of rattlesnakes, irritated skunks, raccoons and coati's, and even larger predators up to and including bears. I did lighting so much for about 20 years when I was deep into the life histories of the Saturniidae, Sphingidae and Arctiidae of the world that I could tell about what time it was based on when whatever species started coming in, and again when they stopped. I kept a more permanent set up on my property that was timer controlled and could be checked easily nightly whenever I wanted to go out during the night, and had two more portable set ups that I could drive to two differnt habitat locations and run off portable generators. The entire night would be spent going back and forth between the portable set ups. Being too tired can be somewhat beaten if you are an early riser. Some individuals of the species that are on a sheet in the wee hours just before dawn will still be there at first light.

I also used pheromones for many years for both nocturnal and diural species of Macrolepidoptera, especially for the above three families and Sesiidea. They are very effective too, but mostly only attract males.

Anyway, if you try blacklighting you will be hooked and will spend many enjoyable hours sitting and enjoying the night air/sky while watching your setup for the next surprise visit. Makes a great family activity too, or with friends who have a like interest in the bugs.

Larry

Larry, my granddaughter would love to do it with me. She is as fascinated by all lepidoptera as I am. Her mom could care less, and that's okay, but I'm starting my granddaughter young so she will have a great appreciation and understanding of all creatures, big and small.

Where would I locate a mercury vapor light? Am not familiar with them, altho I've heard them mentioned by others.

Also, do the moths prefer a 600 thread count sheet? I might have to stop and think it over. I intended to just get a regular, cheapo white sheet.

When I mentioned John Himmelman's method, I should have added that he paints specific trees around his property and checks them at night. He's quite a character if you ever read his book. In one chapter he talks extensively about the history of the early lepidopterans, which I found extremely interesting. He lives in Connecticut, and there are a lot more moths to be found in his area than in Oklahoma, especially the silk moths.

Susan

Susan -

You sure made me smile girl - thank you. It tickles me to see anyone getting children interested in nature. After all, they are the naturalists, habitat preservationists and law makers of tomorrow. Why I spent so much of my free time over the years doing lepidopteran seminars and workshops at libraries, schools and natural history museums for the public. And it's really sepcial to watch a childs eyes light up with new discoveries too. So I applaud you.

As with most of my lepidopteran equipment, I designed and made my own. Scavanged MV transformers and bulb sockets from commercial buildings that were being torn down, built well ventilated boxes to house the workings and ran heavy SO cable up to the sockets that were adapted to mount on camera tripods. I just hang a couple of blacklights on the same tripod so both light spectrums wash the sheet together BTW. While an expensive inverter can be bought to run them off your vehicle battery, I chose to use portable generators for mine in remote locations and just plug them into outside water tight plugs at home, in campgrounds, hotels, etc. My black lights are commercial made for lepidoptera and came from Bio Quip. They will run either off a vehicles 12 volt recepticle (or cigarette lighter), a home plug or generator. Worth the few dollars more for this model if you will ever do remote locations and don't have a generator. They are all available commercialy and the components can be bought from lighting companies that supply the building trades, sometimes assembled. Bio Quip probably still sells them already made up and ready to use for lepidoptera, or check with other scientific, lepidopteran or botanical supply houses. Some warnings though with mercury vapor... don't handle the bulbs with bare hands as the oils will shorten the life of the bulb (and they are expensive); don't stare right at the bulb when in use for more than a quick glance as they can cause permanent eye damage; if their is a possibility of rain, use a rain shield on them that is designed for that bulb; plan ahead for when you want to stop for the night to give the bulb time to cool off before breaking the set up down. They run very hot, as in up ro fifth degree burn hot and can take up to 30 minutes to cool enough to be handled safely. Store the bulb in its protective sleeve rather than leaving it in the socket (doesn't take much to break one, especially when hot). Size wise, a 400 watt bulb would be minimum IMO - a 1000 watt is better if you want to pull moths from a mile away, and the ballast must be rated for the wattage bulb you'll use with it.

On the sheet, I am somewhat embarrased. Mainly because I owned a very large antique quilt store for years with my ex and had to learn a lot about textiles to identify antique fabrics on buying trips for quilts or fabrics (we only sold 100% cotton to those making them or attending our classes though). Can't remember for sure if Percale sheets work best or something else, but with a blacklight in hand trying it on differnt sheets will show you which works best.

When you get set up, think about the location you hang the sheet and place it so the faces are towards the most open skylines, or the natural flyway if the skyline is blocked by very tall trees. This set up will pull the moths in from farther away. A sheet on a wall attracts less 180 instead of nearly 360 degrees. I use shock-corded tent poles that make mine free standing with guy ropes so they can be easily placed whether there is something to anchor them to or not.

Lastly, if the MV sounds like more than you want to get involved with, many families of moths (including many species of Shingidae, Saturniidae, Arctiidae) will come to just blacklights, albeit only from much, much closer distances.

HTH,

Larry

Wow, thanks for all the information, Larry! I really want to do this, since moths have a special place in my heart.

Yes, this morning my granddaughter and I went out to collect hackberry foliage for the caterpillars we're raising right now. The first question she always posits to me is "is it poisonous, Nanny?". I've got her trained so that she asks before she touches. With children, you have to be careful because they are always touching their faces, eyes, etc. She knows that we always wash our hands after handling milkweed, too.

I'm looking forward to doing this experiment with the moths. I've been checking and rechecking on a daily basis to see if any of the sphinx have layed eggs yet on the Virginia Creeper, Elm, Walnut, etc. I've personally found and raised 8 different sphinx, which I think is pretty good for an urban backyard.

I went from being a mother, to a moth-er! LOL

Susan

Fascinating stuff Larry - thanks for all of your expertise. I'm inspired to set out some bait and a blacklight to see what shows up! Do Saturniidae fly this early in Indiana?

cdsetx8 -

3 or 4 of your Saturniidae species should be flying starting this month at that latitude depending on how the season has advanced. H. cercropia has probably already been flying for up to two months there and will fly until about July. Note that the larger silkmoths mostly fly in the wee hours before dawn.

Larry