Northern Wings – Connecting People and Birds of Northern Arizona

Becky Hardy and the Butterfly Enthusiasts of Northern Arizona

• Season 1 • Episode 7

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In this episode, Matt talks with Becky Hardy.  Becky is a Yavapai County master gardener, bird guide, Northern Arizona Audubon Society's education chair and most recently co-founded Butterfly Enthusiasts of Northern Arizona (BENA).  BENA is a wildlife conservation and education nonprofit with the mission to “create a world where butterflies thrive, for the benefit of nature and people.”  In this podcast we discuss a wide range of butterfly related topics, including how BENA benefits our small wildlife, BENA volunteer opportunities, the butterfly species likely to be seen in Northern Arizona, their migrations and how we can create gardens to support butterflies and birds.  Also discussed is how BENA partners with the Northern Arizona Audubon Society.

Credits for Media Used in Name That Bird Song Segment in This Episode

Institution: Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library.

Contributor: Andrew Spencer

Relevant Links

https://www.butterflyenthusiastsofnaz.org/

https://naba.org/

https://swmonarchs.org/

https://www.hummingbirdsociety.org/

Thank you for listening. Please visit our website and subscribe to our Instagram feed.

The Northern Arizona Audubon Society has been the voice for birds in Northern Arizona since 1972. Join us. Add your voice.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome. This podcast is brought to you by the Northern Arizona Audubon Society, the voice for birds in Northern Arizona since 1972. We envision a future in which birds are thriving in Northern Arizona and throughout the world. Visit our website to learn more about this dynamic organization and the work it does for the love of birds and nature, especially in our part of the world. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. My name is Matt Anderson, and in this episode, I have the pleasure of talking with Becky Hardy, the founder and president of the Butterfly Enthusiasts of Northern Arizona, here and after Bina. In addition to being a lifelong butterfly enthusiast, Becky is a master gardener, a birding guide, and the education chair for the Northern Arizona Audubon Society, and an incredible source of information on creating habitats to support both butterflies and hummingbirds. Welcome, Becky. Thank you, Matt. It's great to be here. Yeah, this is going to be fun. I'm so excited to chat with you about all of these really important topics. But let's start off by talking about the butterfly enthusiasts of Northern Arizona. It's a member-based wildlife conservation and education nonprofit serving Northern Arizona. Tell us a little bit about its origins, its mission, how it's organized. And we'll get to how it does its work in a little bit.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. We are actually a local chapter of the nationally recognized North American Butterfly Association. So now in Arizona, we have three local chapters, which is really great. Southeastern Arizona, Central Arizona, and now Northern Arizona, which is wonderful. And we were lucky enough, myself and Denise Gibbs were the co-founders. She is an almost 30-year monarch conservation specialist. Yes. And we decided that it was finally time. She had approached the subject with me a few years ago, I guess it is now, and I just wasn't ready at the time. And then all of a sudden, end of last year, I said, uh, Denise, what do you think? You still interested? Should we do this? And so that's how it came about. And we've built a great board. We have a total of six members now. Our newest member was just voted in about two weeks ago. She is a NAU student working on getting her master's in forest entomology program. So it's really fantastic. And a lot of our other board members as well have either studied butterflies or have a heavy interest in butterflies. So it's a really well, well-rounded group.

SPEAKER_00:

I just love the connections that are evolving between the organizations such as this one, Northern Arizona Audubon Society and Northern Arizona University. It's just a great collaboration, and it's fun to be out there with some of the young birders like Abby, learning from her vast knowledge about birds at Kachina Wetlands, for example.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Yeah. We're all after really the same mission, aren't we? Maybe a little bit of a different animal, but it is the same mission when you think about it.

SPEAKER_00:

I think that's such a really healthy way to look at it. Yeah. This is not gratuitous, this is very sincere. I am just so impressed by the breadth of your knowledge and skills. How and when did you develop your interest in butterfly birds, gardening, nature? I know there are lots of other interests, but maybe we'll focus on those for now.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Well, with the butterflies, I don't even know when it started, honestly. I was so young. I just was enthralled with butterflies ever since I was a little girl. And it just grew from there. And as my husband likes to say, it's getting worse as I get older. And naturally, when you care about butterflies, you start caring about the plants. And honestly, I had a brown thumb when I first started planting and thought, oh, forget this, I'm not even going to do it. But when I really did my first monarch waste station, it was I said, Oh, I need to learn something here. And when it came about making sure that those plants thrived for the butterflies, I don't know, something shifted. And all of a sudden I was able to grow all of these different plants, and it was just so wonderful. I was a late bloomer on the birds, I will admit. It's been about three years now that I've really gotten into birds. When we moved here to Arizona, I thought, my goodness, there are so many beautiful birds here. What are they? And I would look them up in a book. I have a birder friend from California that sent me an Arizona bird book, you know. So I'd be looking at it.

SPEAKER_00:

So I'd like to guess that. It sounds like you've been birding your whole life. No. Yeah, that's a great story.

SPEAKER_01:

I I learned a lot from Northern Arizona Audubon Society, as you know, has some fantastic guides. And so I have learned everything I know about birds from them.

SPEAKER_00:

You've taken both of these things to some really high levels. You're a master gardener now. And you help develop plans for creating habitats for both hummingbirds and butterflies.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's the biggest thing that we really can do as individuals, helping these the smaller wildlife, right? Being able to plant those gardens in our yards. We look at this year. This year is a perfect example of in the wild, we don't have a lot blooming because we just have not had the monso. We didn't have a great winter as well. And so there's a lot of dryness out there in the wild. So having these little pieces of paradise for the butterflies and the birds in our yards really, I think, is a saving grace for our smaller wildlife.

SPEAKER_00:

So, what kind of butterflies are we likely to see here in Arizona, particularly in northern Arizona, and how do the number of species that we're able to see compare with those that might be seen in other states?

SPEAKER_01:

It's amazing. Depending who you speak with, scientist different scientists, different taxonomists, there's about 700 to 750 butterfly species within the United States as a whole. And Arizona has 334 as a state, and we're only second to Texas, which when you think about it is really amazing. Our habitat, our diversity in habitat, you know, between southeastern Arizona, the Sky Islands, coming to here, you know, to Flagstaff, everywhere in between, the desert, we have so many different species. And the amount of species, to give an example, I haven't been butterflying, admittingly, as much in Flagstaff in the past. I am changing that though now, of course, having Bina. But in the Verde Valley, back in 2018, we had about 101 butterfly species that had been identified and observed within the Verde Valley. And we're now up to 124 species because more and more people are getting involved and enjoying being out there and seeing the butterflies. And so I think it's that, and then we do have some other changes, of course, with our weather changes, uh, is a huge thing, like what we're seeing this year, a huge drop in in butterfly species and the amount of individuals that are out there.

SPEAKER_00:

How has climate change impacted butterflies and their migrations?

SPEAKER_01:

So when we talk about migration, of course, everybody knows about the monarch migration. And then we have other species, though, that do migrate. And a lot of them migrate based off of temperature. So some species are more sensitive to cold temperatures, some are more sensitive to hot temperatures. And a species, the cloudless sulfur, is a perfect example of that. They'll be down in the desert in the Phoenix area during the summer, but then when it really starts heating up, they will start migrating north because their host plant is up in the Verde Valley, so then we will start seeing them later in the summer in the Verde Valley. And so it's really interesting seeing these changes and even different sightings that we're having. For an example, I was out with a friend of mine last fall at bubbling ponds, and she observed a Mexican fritillary, which you can hear just by the name, Mexican fritillary. This is a species that's typically in Mexico. Sometimes will come into southeastern Arizona, but to be in bubbling ponds, you know, in the Verde Valley. So we're definitely seeing changes. It's one of those things, if their host plants are here, which is the plant that the female lays the eggs on, if those host plants are present, then there's possibilities that with the weather changes that we're starting to see, we could see these species making migratory changes as well.

SPEAKER_00:

It sounds like one more really good reason for people to get involved in citizen science so that they can help identify these species and provide the data to organizations like yours that are very involved in conservation.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And that's one of the things we do is twice a year we have two annual NABA counts. And this is something that NABA as an organization has been doing since the early 90s. And Xerce Society actually started these counts in 1975. So butterfly counts have been going on for decades. And in fact, I just participated in Patagonia, Arizona's count in its 41st year at the beginning of this month. And we have our count, one of our official counts, tomorrow in Cottonwood. And so again, you know, going to the same locations, you're going to a 15-diameter circle, and having team leads going to certain territories within those circles, and really being able to go year over year to these same locations to see what species you're seeing, how many individuals were seeing of those species, and seeing those changes has been invaluable really to not just myself, scientists, researchers, uh, all of that. In fact, as a result of these counts, in March of 2025 in the journal Science, there was a paper that was just published in regards to species declining 22% in the last 20 years. That's huge. Yeah, and a large data set of that information was from the NAB accounts.

SPEAKER_00:

Now you use volunteers in those counts.

SPEAKER_01:

Of course.

SPEAKER_00:

And so take me through what would the typical experience be for a volunteer participating in a butterfly count like that.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a really fun day. You're spending all day with other butterfly enthusiasts, and you learn a lot. You really do, with learning the habitats that the butterflies are in, and you're literally walking. It could be depending on the territory and who you're assigned to. It could be a little less walking, maybe more driving, getting in and out of the car type of thing. My territory for tomorrow is Dead Horse Ranch State Park and a couple of other areas. And so we literally will walk the trails. I've already scouted, that's very important. So I go out before the count to see what's blooming, what's not blooming. Are there any habitat changes that have occurred since the previous year? And would it make more sense maybe to take a different route, you know, sometimes, and and in this year that is the case, because unfortunately, Dead Horse Ranch State Parks, they had a large cottonwood tree fall on the pipes that feeds the hickey ditch there. And so where I normally guaranteed I have puddling butterflies, I will not have tomorrow. So it's unfortunate. So I expect our count will be low this year. But it's a fun day. So you're out walking, you're learning a lot, and learning about the species, their habitat, even their flight patterns. It's fun. Butterflies even have, depending on their size, because of their wings, the way they fly, you know, our smaller species are more of an erratic flight, and then you've got our two-tailed swallow tail, our state insect, five and a quarter inch wingspan, and they just beautifully glide, you know, and and then we have everything in between. And you can sometimes just by flight say, oh, you know, that was something in this family or that was that species. So it's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

Just as you might with some some birds looking at their flight path.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, exactly. It's amazing. So it's really fun for folks, and they don't have to be a butterfly expert. I was gonna ask about that. Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so it doesn't require a lot of pre-existing knowledge, just none at all.

SPEAKER_01:

Just your willingness to want to participate in a community science event and have a great time.

SPEAKER_00:

Love that. It just sounds like really a fun time.

SPEAKER_01:

It yeah, it's it's really fun.

SPEAKER_00:

And people can learn about opportunities like this by going to your website. Yes. Okay, which we'll come back to in a little bit. So I do want to come back to something I read about your accomplishments in butterfly identification. I read that in 2023 you observed a butterfly species that had never been recorded in the Verde Valley before. Can you tell us a little bit more about that encounter in the species?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yes, that was very exciting. This was at bubbling ponds again. Okay. Yes, that's a great spot. It sounds lovely. If you haven't been there, folks, I highly recommend it for butterflies and birds and other wildlife. It's a wonderful location. And I was out butterflying, just doing my thing, leisurely, enjoying myself. It was actually a pretty great year that year. And I noticed this individual, it was a sulfur species, so it was a yellow butterfly. And I noticed the species, and I looked at it, it landed, and and I said, My goodness, that's a different shade of yellow than our other sulfurs that we have in the area, little bit different wing shape. And unfortunately, there was a fence, and then the butterfly was past the fence, so I couldn't get really close. I always carry a camera on my shoulder, so I was able to get a photo of it, so that was good. And so I did send it out to folks, and and it is a similar, we have a lot of our white species that sometimes can have this yellow tint to them. And so some folks at first thought, oh, well, it's it's a cabbage white, and it's just a yellow-tinted cabbage white. And I said, No, this is a consistent yellow, it has the little thumb print here that's consistent with the species I thought it was, and it was a lysid sulfur. And so at the time, NABA actually had a chat that you could post photos as well, and I thought, well, I'm gonna put it on there. I just wasn't willing to let go. I felt like it was something different. And so I posted it on there, and Jeffrey Glassberg, who is the founder of NABA and is also authored of several reference guides, came on and said, Yes, it is a lysid sulfur. So I said, Well, there's no question then, right? That's right.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's perfect. And what a great story. Yeah. And your observational skills and your perseverance were rewarded. So we talked a little bit about the migration of monarchs, probably the most visible and well-known migratory species. Tell us a little more about migratory patterns of butterflies in general.

SPEAKER_01:

You know what, that's a hard one to actually answer because it varies by year. And I'll give you an example. So painted ladies, probably the second most recognized migration. A lot of people think they are monarchs sometimes or a smaller species, just like the monarchs. They will migrate also down into Mexico. The difference between the monarchs and the painted ladies is that the monarch, it's one individual that is making that migration, overwintering in Mexico or on the coast of California, and then also starts that migration then in the spring. So that generation lives longer, believe it or not. The monarchs, they have their first three generations, which are the breeding generations. They live the average, you know, two to six weeks. But that super generation, that fourth generation, can live up to nine months, sometimes even ten months, because it's one individual making that trek and then overwintering. Painted ladies will actually keep breeding while they're migrating. And so it's multiple generations that are making the migration. And in April of 2020, we were all at home more than we normally would be. And I was on my deck more than I normally would have been, and I noticed that I was having a lot of sulfurs and painted ladies coming through my yard. And it just kept growing every day, getting more and more. And I thought, my gosh, what is going on? So I took my cell phone down, set it for a minute, and counted how many painted ladies flew by me in a minute. And there were 111 that count that flew by me. So clearly, our yard was on the migration path that year, and it's never happened since. And so it's it's hard to say, painted ladies are so well known for sometimes even closing highways down in California, the the migration is so thick. And then other years it's not really noticeable. And so it's it's hard to really pinpoint other species migrations. And then another reason is kind of going back to what I mentioned a little bit earlier is about that temperature sensitivity. If we have, let's say we're getting really cold here, morning cloaks, they have the ability to actually create antifreeze in their bodies. And so they can overwinter here in our cold temperatures. They'll kind of put their bodies, you know, in between the tree trunk and maybe a little crevice where there's some bark, and they'll come out on warm days. A lot of times you'll see them on warm days in the winter cruising around. But if it gets too cold, they will actually start migrating south. So they're a species that amazingly can overwinter here, but they have their thresholds. And then cloudless sulfurs, as I mentioned, if it gets too hot down in the desert, they're gonna start migrating migrating. And again, it depends on that host plant. And and they know they're smelling with their antennas, they they know. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Getting back to the butterfly enthusiasts of Northern Arizona, what are some activities supported by the organization that help you accomplish your mission?

SPEAKER_01:

Our biggest thing is we want people to learn and we want people to have fun. And so we do that by having different chapter meetings, and we'll have folks, well, maybe it's one of our board members maybe talking about because we like I mentioned, we have some very knowledgeable board members speaking at the chapter meetings, or we will bring in other experts in regards to butterflies. For instance, we just had a representative from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife speak at our flagstaff meeting at the beginning of this month. And then we also at the end of the year, we have a really fun meeting where members are the presenters. And so they can share what they've experienced over the summer. And it can be, it doesn't have to be butterflies, it can be other pollinators and even other wildlife if they want. We, of course, prefer the butterflies, but they can send in their photos. They have about five minutes where they can talk about their experiences or if they have questions about the species, and so it's a great gathering for everyone to get together. So that's coming up that first Saturday of October in Sedona. So we're excited about that. We also have butterfly walks, we have different community science events, we do garden talks so people can learn how to plant for butterflies because every single part of their life cycle they have predators: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and adult butterflies. And so those little hiding places and nectar plants and all that are, and I know we're gonna get to that later, so I'll I'll cut it short there. But but there are some special needs that they definitely do prefer to have in the perfect habitat.

SPEAKER_00:

We talked a little bit about citizen science. Tell me a little bit more about the research activities in which Bina is involved.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, we just were founded at the beginning of this year, so we have hit the ground running. Uh-huh. And one of the largest was it was just fortuitous, really, with being education chair of the Autobahn and my relationship with everyone there. It has just been wonderful. And when NAS put in their MOTA stations, which is the antennas to track radio tag birds, part of the new technology was that they would be able to retrofit what they call blue series receivers. And these were created by cellular tracking technologies. Believe it or not, folks, Monarch butterflies can now be radio tagged. There is a radio tag that weighs six one hundredths of a gram. It's smaller than a grain of rice, and it is attached to the butterfly's body. And it's solar powered, so it's not heavy. With these receivers, if a butterfly that is radio tagged flies within about a mile and a quarter, it will ping that receiver. So the Autobahn had initially purchased the equipment for the Blue Series receiver, but when I started Bina, I was approached and they said, Hey, you know, we're gonna cover birds. We're really not gonna talk about the butterflies, so it makes sense that we partner on this. And so they were gracious enough to give us to the end of the year, because we don't get any seed money when we got started, to pay them back for the equipment. We were so thankful to them, to Niles Radio for sponsoring the installation. So we have two stations now, two receivers that have been retrofitted onto NASA's MODIS stations. And this is going to be a game changer. Traditional tagging for monarchs has been that there's a sticker put on the wing of the monarch. And so we have point A, right? We know where that monarch was tagged originally. And then if that monarch is recovered and that tag's recovered at point B, we have point B. So we know where they started, we know where they ended up, but we don't have that story in the middle. And with this new technology, now we will have that story in the middle. And these receivers ping every three seconds, so we'll know how long the monarchs are sticking around in a certain location. And I think it's gonna be huge in nectar, because fall, during fall migration and even in spring, they need their nectar plants. They also need in the spring their host plants. Not in the fall, though, because these migrating monarchs actually go into what's called a breeding diapause. So they shut off all urges to breed and do not breed, and they solely focus on nectarine and getting down to their migration location. And so having these pings and knowing the route that these monarchs are really taking, because that's just been an unanswered question, really, will be pivotal in giving decisions to organizations like ourselves, NGOs, governmental organizations for restoration habitat.

SPEAKER_00:

So this is mid-August right now when we're talking. And in what is it, mid-September to mid-October? Is that the monarch migration that we're likely to see up here in Northern Arizona?

SPEAKER_01:

They've already started. So they will start, you know, kind of you'll start seeing them up here. I I even had one in June this year, which was really interesting. First time I've had that happen. But you will have folks have been out tagging starting in end of July, getting into August, and then your peak migration, yes, is really starts kind of beginning of September up here, like around the third, fourth of September and goes into October. And then of course in the Verde Valley, as you get a little bit lower, it's about the 5th or 6th, if I recall correctly. Southwest Monarch Study has put out a chart to really say, okay, you know, if you're at these longitude, latitude, this is what you're looking at, and so for those peak migrations. But it's already started. So if folks are interested in tagging, they want to contact Southwest Monarch Study. This is a community or citizen science event that you can do as an individual. You can actually order tags through Southwest Monarch Study and tag monarchs, and that's something that you can do on your own.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, on your being a website, you got uh a presentation that was done by Gail Morris of Southwest Monarch Study. And I just had to look at that this morning because it was a link to MODIS and was really impressed by not only the technology, but the research that had been done in the decades past. And I think, as you say, this MODIS, this radio tagging is going to be a game changer. And I bet you're just excited about the possibility of getting some of these pings coming up here in the next couple of months.

SPEAKER_01:

Very, very excited, yes. And the exciting thing is we're not the only Blue Series receivers that are going up in Arizona. I just came from a meeting down in Scottsdale on Tuesday. It's called the Arizona Monarch Collaborative, and that is literally a collaboration of about 80 organizations for the state of Arizona that are focusing on the monarch and their migration and making changes, whether municipalities also, you know, taking the mayor-monarch pledge. It's so exciting to see all the changes that are happening. And I don't want to focus because it's interesting. We just at our meeting in August, somebody said, you know, what makes the monarch so important over other butterflies? And it's not that they're more important, because, as I mentioned from that study, it's a lot of different species that are declining. But the monarch has always been, because of that migration, it's always been in the forefront. It's kind of, I call it the gateway butterfly, right? It gets everybody into the butterflies. And so that's why there's this focus on the monarchs. And if we create those monarch way stations and what have you, they're not just gonna help the monarchs, they are gonna help other butterfly species, other pollinators, birds. So it's really all-encompassing when we make those changes.

SPEAKER_00:

Great. And we're gonna talk in a little bit about how we can make those changes in our own backyards. Boy, you've done a lot in the short time that Bean has been in existence. What would you list as some of your organization's biggest accomplishments?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, definitely. The the Blue Ceres Receiver Project has just been really huge. I can't even tell you. And another one is one of our board members had worked with the U.S. Forest Service for five years as a monarch conservation specialist and a U.S. Forest Service volunteer to get a milkweed planting project in Cave Springs in Oak Creek Canyon. It came through this year, it just happened to fall under Bina's umbrella. But really, Denise Gibbs, I mean, she put in a lot of years and effort and work to really make that happen. So that was a big project we did in July, which is really exciting. And we're gonna have more. We have the Forest Service year, they're on board with us doing a lot of these restoration projects. We just are going to definitely need the funding. These plants and seeds cost money, but they are pretty much saying, hey, give us a list of where you want to put these projects in, and we of course need to go through the appropriate publication process, and we'll make them happen. So that's exciting. So those are our two biggest effects. And then our educational outreach is just huge, letting folks know about butterflies and getting them out there into the field. And my most favorite comment is when I show people, you know, our smallest butterfly here in not just in Arizona, actually in the northern hemisphere, is a half-inch wingspan. And so I'll point it out on a walk, and they'll say, But I've been walking this trail for years, and I've never seen one. You mean to tell me? I've been walking by them this whole time. And so it's fun because it's another butterfly enthusiast is born and it's eye-opening. Next thing I know, I'm getting texts from these folks with pictures of, hey, what's this butterfly, or an email, or what have you. So that's exciting, just getting the word out and letting folks know that butterflies are in trouble. And in that study, one thing I didn't mention in that article that was released of the decline of our butterflies, the largest decline is in the southwest. And so I feel an obligation that it's so important that we get that message out to folks that we need to help them thrive.

SPEAKER_00:

Right now we're gonna take a short break to hear more about the Northern Arizona Audubon Society. And when we come back, we're gonna tackle the name that song challenge and continue this terrific discussion with Becky. Well, welcome back, everyone. In a minute, we're gonna play the song of a bird common to Arizona. Your job is to identify it. Here's a hint: this feisty bird hunts flying insects from high places. We'll reveal the species at the end of the podcast. Now, back to our conversation with Becky Hardy. Becky, I attended your presentation on creating gardens for hummingbirds and butterflies during the fabulous recent Sedona Hummingbird Festival and learned so much. Can you give us some tips that we can implement in our own yards to attract and support butterflies and hummingbirds?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, there's certain things to create that perfect habitat. Insects, which butterflies are insects, are cold-blooded, and so they do need sun. So you don't want a fully shaded location. You definitely want that sun. They will use the sun. Think of their wings like solar panels. You know, literally they will splay their wings all the way out, and that's how they thermoregulate and get their temperatures up in the morning and warm up those muscles. So sun's real important. Water, believe it or not, a lot of people don't think about that. So we have a behavior that butterflies do called puddling. And what it is is they will go to moist soils. And so how I create this in my yard, I don't have a stream, I don't have a river, I don't have a pond. It's on my list, but not yet. I don't live by a lake. So if you do have any of those things running through your yard, which I know a lot of people do around here, you can always look at the edges of the water. If it looks like a little beach, butterflies will actually imbibe, of course, they'll hydrate, but they're also getting the minerals from that soil as well. And this is mostly males that get this. It helps with their pheromones. And some species will literally, as they're flying around, some males will emit a pheromone when they get close enough to the female. So these minerals will help with that. The way I create my man-made puddling is I literally just take pots in the little saucer kit to catch the water. I won't put pots in them, I'll just fill them up with soil and some rocks. And when I'm filling up my bird bath, I will then moisten the soil as well. So it gives them the opportunity, and they actually have landed on those, believe it or not. Cool. Yeah, getting that. So the sun, the water. When it comes to butterflies, they prefer two different types of plants. So you have the host plants, these are the plants that the female lays the eggs on, and then the caterpillar eats. And then you have the nectar plants. And those are the plants then that the adult butterflies will nectar from. And so it's important to have both of those. And honestly, if you have host plants in your in your garden, you're gonna have more butterflies because you're gonna get all four life cycles of those butterflies. And so, especially if you have kids, grandkids, this is a great way to pull those kids in. You can show them the eggs, the caterpillars, the chrysalids, and then the adult butterflies. So it's really a fun, fun experience. You also want to have trees or shrubs if you can, if you've got the room, because on the flip side, we have some butterfly species that are not tolerant to hot, hot temperatures. So they do need the shade as well. And so you want larger, so forbs, your flowers just aren't gonna do the trick. Think about because this protects them from weather too, right? So if you get the nickel size rain or hail from some of our monsoons and a butterfly is underneath a flower, that's just gonna knock them right off. So shrubs and trees are real important for them to roost overnight, to hide from that inclement weather, which is really important. And honestly, all of these tips are really the same thing for birds. They like to have all of these same things. They want a water feature though, not the soil, but they want a water feature that will pull them in when it comes to birds. They will drink, they will bathe in it, even little hummingbirds. If you have, say, a stream or a fountain, where you will see them kind of rubbing their bodies up into it and shaking, and they're getting those little mites off of their bodies. So it's really fun. And so those are some great ways that you can pull the species and wildlife into your gardens. The other thing I forgot to mention was about plants. If you do your host plants, you do want to have more than one host plant when I'm talking about that. So, like mallows are a host plant, thistles are a host plant, milkweed, of course, for the monarchs are a host plant, sunflowers are a host plant. You want to have more than one of each because some of these caterpillars are really voracious eaters, so they can clear that plant of leaves, and you want to clump them somewhat close together. When the butterflies are flying over the yard, they are looking for their plant. These plants and the butterflies evolve together. So they are looking for their plants, and if they see some clumped together, you don't want them right on top of each other, but somewhat close together because you need those caterpillars once they finish up on one plant, you know, that they can get to the other plant close enough. And so that's a great way, too, that you can pull them in.

SPEAKER_00:

And the species that people might want to plant, probably not possible to go through an entire list right now, but those lists are readily available not only on your website, but for hummingbirds, you can find lists on the International Hummingbird Society website as well. Those are hugely helpful references.

SPEAKER_01:

They are, uh absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

So you've alluded to this a little bit, Becky, but how does Bina work with organizations such as Northern Arizona Audubon Society and the International Hummingbird Society to promote the health and conservation of butterflies?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mentioned it earlier that we really all have the same mission when it comes down to it. And one of the first things I did was when I hadn't even formed Bina yet, but I knew that was the direction I wanted to go. I reached out to both organizations and said, hey, are you open to partnering? I think it would be really great. And so we've done different things. Like I will lead butterfly walks for the Hummingbird Society in Sedona in the summer. So I've done that, and so that's kind of how we've been working together. I give presentations at the Hummingbird Society. I've done the same with the Autobahn as well. And then of course, now with Autobahn, with really partnering on our largest project to date and maybe ever, because it's such a huge, we're we're just at the forefront really of this technology, and so it's really exciting. So these are different ways that we are partnering with them. And and in the future, I think we will have also other presentations talking about MODIS and what it does for birds and what the Blue Series receiver does for the butterflies as well, and other wildlife. I mean, dragonflies, bats. These are all the different, literally radio tags that cellular tracking technologies has come up with now. So we'll continue doing that, just kind of I and I called it as kind of corny, but I said, hey, it would be really great if we all partnered and we could cross-pollinate. Really good. Okay. But we will continue to do that in the future and support each other in our endeavors. Yeah. We're all always networking. And in fact, I just had the meeting I mentioned down in Scottsdale, and there was an organization down there that had more questions about MODIS. So, what do I do? The first thing I did was email NAS and say, Hey, would you be interested in speaking with these folks? And they said, Oh, yes. And so, really making those connections is so important in how I think we move forward in the future.

SPEAKER_00:

That's fantastic. So, where can people go for more information about butterfly enthusiasts in northern Arizona and your upcoming activities?

SPEAKER_01:

We've alluded to it a little bit, but yes, we do have a website and it is butterflyenthusiasts of nas.org. So you can go there. We always have a list of our upcoming events. Uh, I will give a little caveat. We are coming soon to the end of butterfly season. So, of course, our upcoming events will be blank. But once we get cold, those butterflies are done. So we won't be doing butterfly walks. But at least through October, if it stays warm, we might do some kind of ad hoc walks. If I'm out and about and I see some butterflies and say, hey, let's go, let's go out. We'll post it or send an email out, maybe. But yeah, our website is our greatest source. We've got different resources on there as well. Host plants, what butterflies you can expect to see in the Verde Valley, and we are hoping to get a list up there by next year for Flagstaff. And so it's just as you can imagine, a lot of time is needed to get all of this compiled and together and with just getting started. We're a little short on volunteers and time right now, so doing the best we can. We even have some ideas of how we want to build out our website as well. But maybe over this slow period when I'm not wanting to be outside so much, we'll we'll make those changes.

SPEAKER_00:

So if somebody wanted to volunteer for your organization, how would they go about pursuing that?

SPEAKER_01:

So they can contact us directly. They can go to our website and there's even a button on there that says become a volunteer, and that will open up your email and send an email to us directly. Or you can send an email to info at butterflyenthusiasts of naz.org and let us know that you'd like to volunteer. And we have different volunteer opportunities with just getting started, as you can imagine. So, I mean, it covers anything. And even if you have an idea that you think you would like to spearhead, we would love to hear that idea. You could be a committee chair for something that'd be exciting. But some of our standard volunteer opportunities would be that we do a lot of tabling events at different festivals and events around a flagstaff and down in the Verde Valley as well. And it's always helpful to have extra hands on there. We have educational materials when we do these table events, so speaking with attendees. Sometimes we'll do a craft for children so you can help the children with a craft. We have the different butterfly gardening opportunities. So not that Bina heads up the garden, but when Denise Gibbs moved here, she moved here about nine years ago now and became a member of NAS, and she wanted to start the Monarch Way Station down at the Page Springs Fish Hatchery as an example. From March to November, we need volunteers to help with deadheading, with watering. It's once a month commitment for a couple hours, you get to be in this beautiful location and tend to this garden that just thrives because of what volunteers are doing and the time and energy that they're putting into it. So that's another fun volunteer opportunity. Our goal for 2026 is to get on social media. So you, if you are interested in monitoring our social media, that that will be another education opportunity as well. And I am in talks with the education director of the afterschool program for the West Sedona School. In 2026, we are going to start offering some after school programs for them. I am absolutely looking for volunteers for that. That could be one time we go and we do something as simple as a bird walk with the kids. Another time we may do a presentation, another time a craft, but we'll definitely need volunteers for that. So those are just some examples. I know I'm forgetting some stuff, but those are some examples to get you started.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, those are so exciting and how fun they sound.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Now it's time to reveal the name of the species singing the beautiful song we heard earlier in the episode. This is the morning song of the Cassins Kingbird. My guess is that plenty of our listeners correctly identified the species, and well done to those who did. We're grateful for the permission to use the clip of Cassins Kingbird by Andrew Spencer from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It's been a pleasure talking with you today, Becky. Thank you for all the hard work that you do on behalf of butterflies and their habitats in Northern Arizona, as well as the education and leadership you provide in your roles with the Northern Arizona Audubon Society. I wish you and the Butterfly Enthusiasts of Northern Arizona great success and look forward to seeing you on a butterfly walk soon. Thanks again.

SPEAKER_01:

Great. Thank you so much, Matt. I hope you join us and thank you again for having me today. This has been great.

SPEAKER_00:

I hope you've enjoyed this conversation with Becky Hardy, president of the Butterfly Enthusiasts of Northern Arizona. A few days after recording it, I attended a butterfly walk with Becky at Bubbling Ponds Preserved, after which we sat down to develop a bonus episode with a more in-depth discussion of creating habitats to support butterflies and hummingbirds, including the importance of avoiding pesticides. We hope you enjoy this bonus episode as well. And if you were interested in hearing more about the modist wildlife tracking system that Becky mentioned, please listen to our podcast on that subject. Please visit our website at Northern ArizonaAudubon.org and consider joining the Northern Arizona Audubon Society or your local bird group to support the work they do to help birds. And above all, we hope you will continue appreciating and protecting birds and the places they need.

Contributor

Matt Anderson

Host