Butterflies are an important part of the environment.Some also control pests, too. For example, the Harvester Butterfly eats aphids in their larval stage. But the main benefits to the environment are as pollinators (when butterflies eat nectar, they hop around, and when they hop around, they accidentally pollinate flowers and plants with their feet. They’re also a food source for other animals.
There are 17,000 species of butterfly, and you can attract them to your yard.
You can attract butterflies to your yard with sunny areas and with a body of shallow water like a bird bath or other container. But you can also build butterfly houses.
Many people have never even seen a butterfly house, so they didn’t even know they could play host to butterflies in this way.
The stand out feature of most About WordPressof these houses is the long vertical slits they have in their feeding face.
You can feed butterfly’s in a butterfly house with things you would otherwise throw away. Butterflies eat nectar usually, but they’ll also devour rotting fruit, like apple cores and pieces of bananas. That’s what you put inside a butterfly house. Park the butterfly house in a sunny spot so they’ll feel like visiting it. The construction of these is very simple, just a box with slits that allow the butterflies to access the food without allowing larger animals the same access! You can also put a small basin of water as part of your butterfly house so they’ll have something to drink.
Pictured houses built by HearthSong, the Homestead Survival, Aquaponic Design, DoItYourself, Duncraft, and Lowe’s Department Store.