Butterfly Puddling Party in the Barrens!

It was a glorious and just about perfect spring day. The temperatures never got out of the 70s where we were, and it was sunny and mild, with lovely (but not too harsh) breezes. It was a great day to be alive. Just joyous.

My husband wanted to jog at the gameland and then grab some tostadas for our lunch. The surprise of the day would be an unexpected visit to Harner Farms to purchase some of that red salvia that our hummingbirds love. But we hadn't gotten to all of that yet. . . .

We drove to the Scotia Barrens and parked at a parking lot a couple of hundred yards from where we usually park. My husband is fussy about his older car, and he doesn't like parking it by the dusty gravel road that goes to the shooting range. So we park, then walk over, then he runs while I take a stroll.

The wonderful and strange news from there is that there was a huge butterfly party going on in that parking lot where we left his car. If we'd parked where we typically park, I never would have seen them! But I spotted them the instant we pulled in. Oh boy, BUTTERFLIES! Lots of 'em!

Someone had dumped part of a truckload of . . . I don't know, based on the smell, I think it was manure. And oh my gosh, the butterflies - a combination of (mostly) the huge yellow eastern tiger swallowtails (Papilio glaucus) and just a few black with pale teal spicebush swallowtails (Papilio troilus Linnaeus) - were going CRAZY on it!

This is a butterfly behavior known as puddling. If you're interested, just google: butterfly puddling. It's typically the males who do this, and they stomp around on damp ground, sucking up salts and minerals and amino acids to aid in their reproductive success. It almost looks like dancing.

I read with great interest a little article about puddling, in which the dude who wrote it quotes some other butterfly expert as saying: If you want to attract butterflies to your yard, put out carcasses and manure. 

This made me laugh long and loud, as I am forever bringing home old bones (but without the ooky stuff, okay?). Butterflies love stinky stuff.  In fact they go nuts over it. So that doesn't fit your concept of butterflies? Well, get over it!

I watched the butterflies for a long time, taking lots of photos. They sometimes landed on each other, but there was no aggression at all among or between them. It was a big butterfly party, and I got to see it, hooray!

I need a soundtrack song for this. I was listening to this little ditty on my blue tunes box (and by the way, there's further news on the music front: guess what, I ordered another little Sandisk tunes box, this one in black and red, but without the bluetooth, and it's expected to be here by Monday), and this song came on. I know it was NOT late in the evening when all of this took place, but it was a dancing song, and so I danced along, pretending I was a butterfly on a perfect spring day! Here is Paul Simon, with Late in the Evening, from the Concert in Central Park. Dance if you feel like it! I did!