Northern Wings – Connecting People and Birds of Northern Arizona

Becky Hardy, of BENA: Creating Butterfly Habitats

• Northern Arizona Audubon Society • Season 1 • Episode 8

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In this bonus episode of Northern Wings, we continue our conversation with Becky Hardy, this time, focusing on creating habitats for butterflies and hummingbirds.  Becky is the president of the Butterfly Enthusiasts of Northern Arizona, a Yavapai County master gardener, birding guide, and the education chair for the Northern Arizona Audubon Society.    

We recorded this episode at Bubbling Ponds Preserve in the beautiful Anita MacFarlane Ramada following a wonderful butterfly walk Becky led at the preserve.

https://www.butterflyenthusiastsofnaz.org/

https://xerces.org/

https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/

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SPEAKER_02:

Hey, this is Matt Anderson, and welcome to a bonus episode of Northern Wings, in which we continue our conversation with Becky Hardy, this time focusing on creating habitats for butterflies and hummingbirds. Becky is the president of Butterfly Enthusiasts of Northern Arizona and a master gardener. In addition, she is the education chair and leads bird walks for the Northern Arizona Audubon Society. She's also a delightful guest. We recorded this episode at Bubbling Ponds Preserve in the beautiful Anita McFarland Ramada, hallow ground for many birders in Northern Arizona, following a wonderful butterfly walk Becky led at the preserve. The musical score for this episode was provided by the preserve's cicada chorus. So let's talk about habitats. We're here in a beautiful location, and butterflies seem to thrive here. What does it take for that to happen? And maybe we can generalize that to how we might have that happen in our own backyards.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Yeah, I'm really glad we got to meet again. We had so much to talk about before, and now to really be able to concentrate on butterfly habitat, which is so important. Right now we are surrounded by shrubs and trees and flowers and water. And all of these things are really, really important when it comes to butterfly habitat. You know, you wouldn't think of it, but sun and shade are really needed. That's really important when we're thinking about planting our butterfly gardens, our bird gardens, because you have signs for the insect so butterfly to color. So they need that 55 degrees and warm up with really sunny conditions before they really will start flying most of those species. And then on the flip side, too, though, we need shades because we have some species that are not so feet tolerant. And so once we hit the 95 degrees, 100 degrees, you will find that just like our birds, butterflies start disappearing and so they will rest and roost in certain locations. So sun and shade are both really important when we're talking about butterfly and bird habitats. The other thing that's really important is the water. So, of course, for birds, they need to drink water. Hummingbirds will use water, and senses if you have like a fountain or water feature, dripping feature, they'll even try and wash the mites off of their bodies. They'll use that water to do that, as well as drinking the water. Butterflies, on the other hand, they don't necessarily drink water, but when they have moist soils, moist rocks, even, they're minerals that are actually in that moisture. And so they are nectaring and imbibing those minerals. And typically it's males that will do this. And they will use those minerals for their pheromones. Some butterfly species, when they're flying around doing that kind of mating dance, when they get close to the female, they will emit the pheromones to the female, which is really neat. And males will do that also, the puddling, for passing it on to the females when they lay their eggs. So when the male mates with a female, they will pass on a sperm ur, and I know I mispronounce that, I always have a hard time saying it, but it's essentially like a sperm pack to the female. So those minerals will help with the viability of eggs as well. So even if you're not near a pond or a river or a creek in our area here, you can make your own man-made puddling locations. I use literally just the saucers from plant pots, and I will fill them up with soil and some rocks, and when I fill up my bird baths, I will then put a little bit of water in there as well so there's moist soil for the butterflies to come and puddle. And they come, not in the numbers they would necessarily come on a river side or side of the pond, but they do still come and use it, which is really fun. The other important thing, this is getting a little bit more specific to butterflies, is the planting of native host and nectar plants. Butterflies really need two types of plants. So those host plants are the plant that the female lays the eggs on and then the caterpillar eats. And so some species are generalists. They have so many different species of plants that they will lay their eggs on that scientists don't even know all the plants they're using yet. And these are like gray hair streaks, these are smaller butterflies, or painted ladies, they're a medium-sized butterfly. Those are two species that are notorious generalists when it comes to their host plants. But then we have specialists, and I'll mention the monarch because everybody's familiar with monarchs. Milkweeds are the only plants that monarchs will lay their eggs on and the caterpillars eat. And so that's the Asclepia species. And so it's real important that we have these native plants, host plants that are in your garden. Not only are they beautiful, a lot of people think of them as weeds, but when you see these blooms, when you see the amount of butterflies and of the pollinators that they pull in onto those blood, did you watch that hot process? I did, and I did that in our monarch waste data and I had a monarch waste station in California, and it literally, as I would see butterflies flying into maybe nectar on a plant, I would look up their host plant and say, okay, we had a great, a native nursery where I lived, and I would run up and get their host plant then. And so I just literally had, I think we had 12 to 15 different host plant species in our yard when all was said and done, which was really fun. You also had the nectar plants, though. Now these are really important for the butterflies in the sense of you have to have something for these butterflies for their energy, right? Getting the sugar, getting that nectar. So important. And we really want nectar plants that are blooming from spring into fall. And the reason being is, of course, the monarchs, coming back to the monarchs again, they migrate. They have a long migration, the longest migration of our species that we have here down into Mexico. So they need to fill up, right? And build up their strength, build up their bodies. You can literally see how a butterfly is doing within their body, you know, how thin or how full that body is. And so we want to have those spring through fall blooms. We sometimes forget about fall, but that is a critical time for our migrating species, not just for butterflies, but for our birds as well, our hummingbirds especially. So it's real important to think about that. Different color blooms are really great as well. And of course, now the biggest thing is pesticides. Don't use pesticides, pesticides in your yards, and try and not buy pesticide plants at nurseries. We have a lot of nurseries that sell gorgeous flowers. We all want our garden to look pretty. But you know what? Quite honestly, the butterflies they want a messy garden, they want a messy space. They want plants and knee plants that don't have those pesticides. They can kill the caterpillars, they can also kill the butterflies and other pollinators with nectarine on them. They can also affect the energy expenditure of hummingbirds, believe it or not, if they have pesticides in them. There are two types essentially of pesticides. You've got your topical pesticides, which that's exactly it. You know, it's placed on the plants on top, right? It's not getting into the plant. Those usually can be washed off, they usually don't last as long on the plant, but they still can be dangerous. So I always recommend to folks, you know, you maybe want to quarantine these plants. And what I mean by that is literally if you have a greenhouse, put them in there that first year, or just cut off the blooms so nobody is actually nectaring off of them for that first year. Then you have your systemic pesticides. Systemic pesticides are neonicotinoids, is one of the ones that you hear about a lot. And a lot of nurseries are learning, they're moving away from the neonicotinoids, but they're dangerous because they are systemic. They get into everything, including the roots of the plant, the nectar of the plant, the pollen of the plant, and they can stay in there for years. They can get into the soil, they can affect other plants close by if it's getting into the soil as well. So I always recommend to people ask the nursery, ask the growers, do you use pesticides? If you do, you know, what are they? Xercees Society has a great uh Xercees.org has a great pesticide reference that you can actually look up. So if you get these crazy names, and I'm not even gonna try and pronounce one of them, because those are really difficult names, but you can look up those names and see, okay, how does it affect the plant? How long does it stay in the plant? So you can really educate yourself about what's going on with these pesticides and how it can affect our smaller wildlife.

SPEAKER_01:

So if I wanted to learn what species I could put in my garden, where would I find that influence?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a really good question. We, as you know, just got started. We're a newer organization. So we are working to get a list of host plants out there. If you have reference guides, though, butterfly reference guides, they will typically put in there what the host plants are of each of the species. So that's a great place to start if you already have the reference guides. You also can and look it up online too. In the meantime, before we get like a comprehensive list together, there's an organization called butterfliesandmoths.org. It's a great site. You can find out, say you want to plant for everyone uses it knows the monarch, so I'm not going to use them as an example. Let's use the hackberry emperor as an example. I gave away the host plant, right? Hackberry trees. And we saw one of those today, didn't we? We did see one of those today, yes. So that was really a lot of fun. They they love canopied areas, and they, believe it or not, don't nectar on plants. They are more of a tree sap nectar. And if you want those in your yard and we have other hackberry species, you want a hackberry tree in your yard. So you could go on butterfliesandmoss.org, put in hackberry emper, you could get photos of the hackberry emperor, see what it looks like, see what their host plants are, see what the flight period is, even. So, what times of year can you expect to see them in and around our area? Now keep in mind that is for all of United States, so it may be shortened because we do, we're a little bit colder up here, so we start a little bit later than say Southeast Arizona. But that's a great way to find out for right now until we can get that list put together. But it's something we're we're wanting to get on our website.

SPEAKER_02:

Looking forward to seeing it. And I've had a good experience is going to the local nursery and saying, what do you have that would attract hummingbirds and butterflies? And got some really, I thought, credible answers to that.

SPEAKER_00:

Fantastic. Yeah. And they may, some of them may know host plants, and some may be recommending just the nectar plants. Um if you really are trying to pull in a certain species, number one, make sure it's a species we have in our territory here. We do have a list. I think I mentioned in our other podcasts that we do have a list of Verdi Valley species that we have observed throughout the Verde Valley. So you can go online and check that out and say, hey, I'd like to get these specific species and then and then look it up online and go into the nursery and let them know these are the plants we're looking for. We have a lot of native plant nurseries down in Southeast Arizona that I usually end up recommending folks to. Sadly, in our area, specific area here, we don't have as many. There are certain growers, Sivano I know is one that doesn't use pesticides. But the best way to think about it, a lot of these growers also use other growers, so they may not necessarily know their growing habits, whether they're using pesticides and what have you. And also if you're ordering plants online, anything that crosses the state lines has to be treated with a pesticide. So that's also something to keep in mind as well. And that's just a law, state law, that they have to unless they have a special permit. And so I know there aren't too many that have them. They are out there, but not too many have them. And lastly is something we sort of talked about on our walk today at the end of the walk was great habitat when we're out on a place like this, is be careful about where you're stepping. I'm a little ecosystem below our feet, and I'm a big believer of that. Especially when we talk about butterflies overwintering, they overwinter, they go into what's called diapause. So they literally, depending on the species at ranges, they could be an egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, or adult form during the winter. And those caterpillars, some of them literally will drop to the bottom of their plant. And so they're in leaf litter and organic, you know, matter during the winter, you know, hibernating and keeping warm. So I try not to step on plants if I have an empty dirt spot, you know, I'm climbing over the plants and what have you. But for our gardens, another thing to think about too is maybe hold off on braking, mowing, blowing, deadheading our plants because eggs, when they're laid, they're on that plant, they can't move. Some of our caterpillars could still be on a plant or down at the base of it. And some of our chrysalids, so when they're in that pupil form, they are stationary, they can't move. So if we're deadheading these plants, you may be putting them into compost or maybe in the trash. We're also throwing out eggs and chrysalis and and maybe even caterpillars. So I recommend folks, if you can wait till kind of late spring, give those guys a chance to get through their life cycles to be able to become a full adult butterfly. Because they all in all their life cycles, it's a challenge to be able to get to that next stage.

SPEAKER_02:

Now, what would a garden look like best at home? What in terms of plant density, in terms of incorporating water features and things like that? What would you recommend?

SPEAKER_00:

Great question. Plant density is important to a point for the butterflies. When you have the host plants, especially, butterflies, when they're flying over, you know, they are looking for patches of their host plant. They can smell, they they smell with their antenna, they taste with their feet. So they will, if they think they see their host plant or smell it, they're going to come on down, they're going to check it out with their feet. So if you have things kind of clumped together, you know, not on top of each other, but close enough so those caterpillars, if they need to move to another plant, they're close enough. You will want to put them kind of close together. They like messy. I know we're so used to having a manicured garden, but butterflies do love having a messy area. They, I think they feel safe. You know, you want to have trees and shrubs, so again, to have those sun and and shade spots so that they have places to roost, write out bad weather, things like that, and then have that water feature somewhat close by. It doesn't have to be right there, but somewhat close by. So some of those species that prefer really puddling versus nectaring on a flower, they have that as well.

SPEAKER_02:

What would you recommend in terms of when to plant things here? This is uh late August right now, and we've got the monarch migration coming up here shortly. Oh, it started already in some places. Correct. Is it too late to plant? Should we be thinking about that now?

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely not. What do you recommend? It's a great time to plant right now. Honestly, I had originally thought even, you know, say July was a bad time to plant, but I had a former nursery owner, one of our board members, tell me, no, you you can plant. And so I did plant some seed balls and some plugs of plants, and they're already growing, starting to bloom, looking great. So that was end of July. So really now is even better because we're really starting to cool off. I had to water a lot to get those started, but now is a really good time, especially for the fall migration. And then, of course, springtime is a good time as well. So you can start, you know, February. Once once you get, say, a week or more of no more frost, but as we know, this year was a perfect example, we can still get those late freezes. So there's still no guarantee, but you can wait. I I actually usually wait until about April for me personally, but I know people who start earlier than that.

SPEAKER_02:

One of the things that I love about your messaging is that you treat butterflies and hummingbirds kind of in the same category in terms of taking care of them. And it seems like there's a lot of synergy between different pieces that you put together to create habitats that support and attract these species.

SPEAKER_00:

There are, yeah, and I know I keep talking about hummingbirds, and it's because they kind they get lumped in being, yeah, they're pollinators, right? And so they I do lump them all all together. They are birds though, of course, and this all applies for birds, any species of bird as well. Same theory as far as habitat requirements and things that you want to have in your yard. You can have like the hackberry tree is a perfect example where you know, in the spring it's blooming. So you're gonna have the butterflies and pollinators on there, nectaring, pollinating the tree. And then now, this time of year, we are starting to see the berries forming. And so those are gonna be great food sources for birds in the winter. Those berries, yeah, they'll be covered in birds.

SPEAKER_02:

That's fantastic. A world with more birds and more butterflies sounds like a good world.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely, and there's really a connect between butterflies and birds that I think I touched on in our previous podcast that that I'll just high-level mention again is you know, the birds, a large amount of our species are insect eaters. They need to have those butterflies and those moths, the caterpillars and the adult butterflies, I hate to say it, um, but to thrive. You know, they all need each other really, that synergy, that relationship that they all have to all be able to thrive. So it's these gardens are really, really important.

SPEAKER_02:

And one of the things that I think is well recognized is that many of the species of both hummingbirds and butterflies are on in decline. And so everything that we can do as citizens to support all of those species is uh really worth the effort.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. I wholeheartedly agree.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's been so great talking with you this morning and going on the butterfly walk with you. I learned a lot, had a great time, got in quite a few steps. And it's been a great morning, and so appreciate your wisdom and look forward to chatting with you again. And of course, wish you and your organization, the butterfly enthusiasts of Northern Arizona and the Northern Arizona Audubon Society itself for your education chair. All the best.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much. It was wonderful to chat with you again and talk about such an important topic. I really appreciate you having me back.

SPEAKER_02:

We hope you've enjoyed this bonus episode of Northern Wings. Our conversation today came to a fitting end as a monarch butterfly flew through the Anita McFarlane Ramada as we were leaving. Please listen to the previous episode of this podcast for more information on butterflies and the organization Butterfly Enthusiasts of Northern Arizona.

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Matt Anderson

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