Nature’s calling: more to butterflies than meets the eye
No matter how many beautiful flowers you grow in your garden you are simply not going to attract all the butterflies as some have very strange tastes.
With lockdown still in place, it is nice to see some folks spending more time in their gardens and sending some interesting pictures of small creatures they are finding.
Most people are noticing many beautiful butterflies.
Butterflies are the second most watched and photographed group of creatures after birds and this is for a good reason. But there is much more to butterflies than their beauty and grace. Butterflies can be just as diverse as birds as far as habits and habitats are concerned.
When I photographed this green-veined emperor butterfly feeding on a fresh pile of poo the first thing that came to mind was, “Why, out of all the beautiful flowers to choose from, you have to feed on poo?”
No matter how many beautiful flowers you grow in your garden you are simply not going to attract all the butterflies as some have very strange tastes. The emperor (charaxes) butterflies are one such group of butterflies and they are the most beautiful. They like nothing more than sucking on fermenting fruits and also certain tree saps, however, they will also feed on the nutrients found in certain animal droppings. So if you want to attract beautiful emperor butterflies to your garden simply hand out some rotting fruit.
There are also certain butterflies that enjoy doing what is called mud puddling. After it had rained they will congregate around pools of muddy water where they will suck up the nutrients found in the mud. Some butterflies will even seek out a spot where another animal has urinated and suck up the urine for the same purpose.
In South Africa we also get the woolly legs butterflies. Their larvae are carnivores, feeding on aphids. The adult butterflies feed on the honeydew that the aphids produce, hence the need for those fluffy legs that protect them from ants. There are four species of woolly legs butterflies found in the Durban area.
Not all butterflies feed on conventional plants. The woolly legs butterfly whose caterpillars feed on aphids, but there are also a few species of butterfly whose caterpillars feed on the lichen that grows on rocks. Lichen grows on rocks and tree bark, similar to moss and there are a few butterfly species who’s caterpillars specialise on feeding on it.
The most common butterfly in our area known to do this is the spotted pentila. The female will seek out rocks with the most lichen on to lay her eggs.
The caterpillars will grow, feeding on the lichen, but as you know, if we do not have rain for an extended period the lichen dies off. When this happens the caterpillars can go dormant, in a type of hibernation until there is some rain to help its food grow.
If you would like to contact Warren to have your interesting insects, snakes or other wildlife identified, send him a WhatsApp message or call him on 072-211-0353. Visit Warren’s Facebook page called, Warren’s Small World.
