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Attract Butterfies
B
utteries recognize certain combinations o colors, shapes,sizes, ragrances, arrangement o blooms, and visible andinvisible nectar guides to fnd their ood preerences. Toattract them to your porch or yard, just plant a pot or plot o some otheir avorites such as buttery weed, cosmos, lavender, or zinnias.Would you believe me i I told you that butteries are not onlyattracted to sweet owers, but also to resh piles o dung, rotting ruit,and mud puddles? Why not make a big mud pie to attract backyardbutteries? Butteries don’t drink rom open water, so your moistmud pie is the perect place or them to stop or rereshment.A buttery will land and uncoil its springlike proboscis tosuck minerals, dissolved salts, protein, and calcium—invisibleingredients they need or successul mating.
Mud pie recipe
Fill a large saucer with soil and sand.Sprinkle on a bit o table salt.Have your grandchild thoroughly wet the soil to make a mudpie, and then wet it every day—a task she will love. Place a at rockin the center o the pie so butteries can land and eed. Drizzle a bito maple syrup on part o the rock or an extra snack.Set the mud pie in a sunny area o your garden, preerablynear owers. You might want to spy on your mud pie rom insideyour hideout (see page 46). I you keep a close watch, you maysee all kinds o butteries, rom butter-colored sulphurs,ittery skippers, blues, which look like tiny patcheso sky, and yellow-and-black tiger-stripedswallowtails—all gathering or a mud pie party.
Everyone is welcome atthe mud pie party.
The neighborhood naTuralisT ~ 41
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