Category: Learning Outdoors (Page 57 of 63)

Learning Outdoors: Butterfly Gardening

Imagine a garden full of brightly colored flowers, oranges, yellows and blues. Your children are squealing as they find yet another caterpillar hidden on a plant. Then their attention is diverted as they spot a yellow butterfly fluttering nearby. As they race to get a closer look, a bright orange and black butterfly glides into view. Everyone points and cheers as they spot the first monarch of the year.

Seem like an impossible dream? Actually with a little research and a small plot of ground, almost anything is possible when it comes to butterfly gardening. Plant a few food plants and some well-chosen flowers, and your garden can become an outdoor paradise for learning about butterflies and other insects.

What do you need to do to start a butterfly garden? The first step is research, research, research. Every region has its own unique blend of plant and butterfly species, and what works in one place may not in another. You and your children will need to look for species of butterflies that occur locally, and then find out what plants the adults use for food (nectar usually), and plants the caterpillars feed on. Fortunately in most areas there are individuals and organizations that are interested in butterfly gardening, and they have probably done some of the research for you. Try an Internet search for butterfly gardening in your region. Visit your local botanical gardens or arboreta. Look for regional books on butterflies and butterfly gardening. Also, keep records of what kinds of butterflies you see when you are hiking or walking through your neighborhood. Try to figure out what plants they seem to prefer.

In general:

buckeye butterfly
Scientists have shown adult butterflies prefer flowers that are yellow or blue. They also prefer flowers that are flat, so they have a platform to stand on while feeding, like this buckeye butterfly.

lantana

Neat fact:  Ever look closely at a Lantana flower? The center is often yellow and the outside dark pink. The yellow flowers are the fresh ones, with plenty of nectar and pollen. Once each individual flower in the cluster has been pollinated, it turns dark pink and is no longer attractive to butterflies.

butterfly weed

Butterfly weed is a common plant that will attract many butterflies.

moth eggs

The adult butterflies lay their eggs on the plants their caterpillars will eat. (These are the eggs of a large moth, by the way).

fritillary caterpillar

The caterpillars or larvae feed on the plant once they hatch from their eggs. Some caterpillars feed only on one or a few plants. For example, fritillary caterpillars feed on passion vines.

Other caterpillars may use a number of different plants as food. Also, some species may use one group of plants in one region and a different set in another region, depending on temperature, plant availability, etc. You only need to provide one or a few of the correct plants to attract butterflies.

Adult butterflies may be attracted to feeders, or pieces of certain kinds of fruit. There are some simple butterfly feeders that are easy to make.

male blues puddling

Adult butterflies may also be attracted to patches of mud, particularly the males. This behavior is called puddling.

After you and your children have decided which plants will work for your area, decide where to plant them. If you have a large enough space, you might want to develop a formal design. If not, plant them where you can. Just take care that if the plant requires sun, that it is a place with adequate sun and vice versa with shade-loving plants.

If possible, include your children in the planning and planting of the garden. Giving them ownership of a project is great for children’s self-esteem and helps maintain their enthusiasm. If things don’t go as planned, celebrate the mistakes as learning opportunities.

painted ladywhite butterfly

Once the plants are in, the ideas for projects will begin to flow. Planting a butterfly garden with children is sure to take you into directions you never dreamed possible.

Here are some books about butterflies and caterpillars in a later post. There are also some books listed in the white-lined sphinx moth post.

Bugs of the Week: Billions of Bees

Oh, I wish I had the time to take some video of one of our plants this morning. Our desert spoon is flowering and it is alive with bees. Honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, digger bees, sweat bees, big bees, tiny bees, billions and billions of bees. Well, probably not that many, but it seemed that way. It was like a swarm.

The desert spoon plant sends up a huge flower stalk covered with blooms. This year there were 5 stalks. You can’t see them all here.

desert spoon

Each stalk was covered with hundreds of bees. Each of those specks was a fast-moving insect.

bees
Of course you know that the bees were gathering pollen, the yellowish powder produced by the flower, and nectar, the sweet liquid reward for picking up the pollen. The honey bees pack the pollen into the specially shaped baskets on their hind legs. Check out the load this honey bee has gathered. Honey bees were the most numerous bees this morning.

honey bee

I was able to get very close to these insects without any danger. They were intent on gathering food, and that is it.

The biggest bees I saw were the black carpenter bees, but they seemed intimidated by the other bees and quickly flew away. They may have also been sizing up the stalks as future home sites. Carpenter bees build their nests in agave and desert spoon flower stalks.

The second biggest bees were yellow and black bumble bees. They stay near the top of the stalks, so I couldn’t get a close up.

bumble bee

The smallest bees were some tiny sweat bees. They were numerous, but not as noticeable because of their pencil-lead size.

sweat bee

Mixed in were a few other sweat bees and digger bees. Here are two examples.

green beeStripe bee

Finally, not all the creatures I saw this morning were working hard to gather pollen and nectar. This jumping spider was taking advantage of the bounty of bees to catch breakfast. It was behaving in an odd manner, jumping down and hanging upside down with its legs drawn in. In that position it looked all the world like a flying bee. Very Cool!!

spider

For more information about bees, check out the “Africanized Honey Bees on the Move” website under the blogroll in the sidebar.

Also, try out growing list of children’s books about honey bees at Science Books for Kids.

honey-bee-books-for-children

Weekend Science Fun: Drawing Living Things

Where Art, Science and Nature Meet: Scientific Illustration

A young student recently asked me about becoming a scientist. “I can’t decide whether I want to be a scientist,” he said, “I really like art, too.” I assured him that science and art are not mutually exclusive, as you might think. There are a lot of ways to find careers that incorporate both. One of the most obvious is scientific illustration.

Scientific illustrators supply drawings and paintings to help identify organisms, illustrate scientific methods, and show complex processes for scientific papers, technical books and textbooks. Nature illustrations are also extremely popular art forms right now.

Here is a wonderful example of illustrations of insects. (Scroll to the bottom of this page to find links to his other insect galleries and a somewhat technical description of how he does scientific illustration.)

Are you inspired? Why don’t you try some scientific illustrations yourself?

If at all possible, it is helpful to draw from real organisms. Go outside, find a plant or relatively slow insect and start to draw. A spider hanging in a web might be a good subject. Indoors you might want to try your sleeping cat or the fish in the fish tank.

First, observe the subject closely. Observation skills are valuable in both art and science. Count the leaves and look at their shape. Do the leaves all come off the twig at the same spot or up and down the stem? Are the flowers really all one color or are they a mix of colors? Notice the shape of the veins in the leaf. If you are looking at an insect, observe that the legs and wings of an insect come from the middle section, the thorax. The spider has two body parts, with eight legs attached to the front part. Where do the fins attach on your fish and how many fins are there? Getting the details nailed helps make your drawing more realistic.

There are many websites and books to help teach you to draw. One of my favorite books is “Draw Insects” by Doug DuBosque. It is published by Peel productions, Inc. It gives step-by-step instructions for drawing a number of different insects.

As always, relax and have fun. If a line doesn’t quite turn out the way you want, see if you can make it into a “happy accident” and turn it into something else. Enjoy!

insect watercolor

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