Ways to Help Butterflies and Moths

          

Have you ever been delighted by the sight of butterflies flitting in the sunlight?
Here are a few ways to help butterflies and moths:

You can plant a butterfly garden in your very own backyard! Choose a sunny spot with suitable soil. Instead of using manufactured fertilizer, you can create compost, a mixture made of dead leaves and fruit and vegetable matter.  
Whenever you peel a fruit, or have any waste from produce, you should compost it. Prepare a special bin for it in your backyard. Once you have accumulated enough, you can use it as natural fertilizer for your butterfly plants.

Recommended plants include petunias, buddleia, and zinnias. In places such as your front porch, or by your bedroom window, you can also hang butterfly feeders filled with a simple mixture of water and sugar. 

Feeders are extremely easy to make. 
One type of feeder can be made of just an orange slice! 
Here are a few instructions for how to make feeders.

A group of feeding butterflies!

Sponge Feeder

1. Punch 4 holes in a sponge. There should be two holes punched on the top and two on the bottom.

2. Cut two long pieces of wire (length depends on how far down you want your feeder to hang.) Poke one end of the wire through one of the holes, and poke the other end through the hole right next to it. You should have two wire ends sticking up on one side. This will be the side you hang it up on. Do the exact same process on the other two holes. Now you are ready to soak it.
3. Glue or tape the sponge’s underside(the one with no wires sticking up) on to the inside of a shallow container. Next, fill the container with water and sugar. Finally, hang your feeder!

Another simple feeder you can make is just composed of half an orange in a bowl! Here is anotherextremely simple feeder. With this one you need just a used food container and lid. First, drill a few(as in 5 or 6) fairly large holes in the lid.

The feeder should be able to accommodate more than one butterfly! Next, drill another hole in the center. Then, cut a long piece of wire or string and stick it through the center hole. After that, knot or crumple(in the case of wire) a ball at the end of the bit of string on the underside of the lid until it is larger than the hole the string was poked through. Make sure the lid cannot fall off, even when you pull the string. Fill the container up to the top with sugarwater and a small amount of fruit juice, if you want. Then screw the lid on. You’re ready to hang it!

2. You can help moths by turning off your outdoor lights. Moths, as well as other insects, navigate by the moon’s light, and a light could easily disorient them. Instead of flying towards the moon, moths would fly towards the light, and, when they arrive there, they would be stuck.

Have you ever caught a butterfly? If so, you may have noticed a dusty substance coming off on your hands. These are actually the butterfly’s scales. Scales are extremely tiny, and individual ones are microscopic. However, put thousands of them together in a specific pattern, and you have a vibrant display of color that makes up the unique features of every butterfly species. 

This picture(above) is an extreme close up of a butterfly’s wing! A butterfly drinks nectar from flowers. However, there is one obstacle. The nectar is hidden inside a chamber deep inside the flower. Butterflies have found a solution to this problem by using a proboscis( see picture below butterfly wing) A proboscis is a long coiled tube that can probe into a flower and suck up nectar. From what I have been telling you, you may think that a butterfly also tastes with its proboscis. That is actually a wrong assumption! They taste with... their feet!! Butterflies have taste buds on their feet, and that is how they can taste what nectar they are drinking.

Butterfly scales(pretty close up!)

Proboscis! ( it is indeed real!)

3. You probably enjoy catching butterflies, but always remember, you MUST RELEASE!!! You may be sad to see it go, but you would definitely feel much worse if it had died in captivity. Only keep your butterfly for an hour, at most if it has food. If you are raising butterflies for a school project, you can keep them for longer, as long as they have food. 

But whenever you catch for fun, it is always recommended to release, and you should encourage it too, if you are catching with a friend. Also remember, when you are catching, be gentle! Do not smash the net on the butterfly; they are fragile! When you transfer to the bughouse, instead of squashing it, you should bunch up your net in the area where the butterfly is. You should be restricting it from moving to any other part of the net. Then, bring your other hand over, and slowly bring it into the bunched part. Once your hand is in, close the bunch. Wait for the butterfly to land and gently pinch it by the wings. Wait, that needs to be said again: GENTLY pinch the wings!!! Then, swiftly move it to the bughouse.

4. SciStarter( http://www.scistarter.com/) projects concerning butterflies include the following: project MonarchHealth,(http://www.scistarter.com/project/500-Project%20MonarchHealth) Butterflies and Moths of North America(http://www.scistarter.com/project/368-Butterflies%20and%20Moths%20of%20North%20America), Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey( only for those living in England), and Monarch Waystation Program(http://www.scistarter.com/project/216-Monarch%20Waystation%20Program). In monarch waystation, you plant a backyard monarch garden. Tip: A monarch caterpillar's host plant is milkweed. If you visit the website by clicking on the links( highlighted in purple) you may find projects exclusive to where you live(it depends where). Fun Fact: Monarchs are migratory butterflies, meaning that they migrate from one place to another to escape cold weather. No one really knows how they navigate their way. It is thought that they have a built in compass in their brain, or can sense minor changes in the air current. No one knows for sure.

The picture below is what it looks like in some major points in the migration:

Ways to Help Grasshoppers and Crickets

When you think of the sounds of summer, you might imagine a chorus of crickets or the cheerful chirp of grasshoppers. To help grasshoppers and crickets in your backyard, you don’t even need to do anything -- all you need is to NOT do something! Leave a patch of grass unmowed!


The patch of grass does not need to be weeded or planted in rows. It can just be in a spot under a tree, instead of in a flowerbed.

Crickets and grasshoppers are very similar, being in the same order (Orthoptera). They also look alike and exhibit similar behaviors. However, they do have some differences. While a grasshopper’s antennae are short, a cricket’s are long. Also, a grasshopper’s ears are on its abdomen, and a cricket’s are on its legs! In addition, crickets are nocturnal, but grasshoppers are diurnal.

Have you ever wondered how grasshoppers and crickets make their chirping sounds? Instead of being a vocal noise, the chirping sound is made by the rapid rubbing of a grasshopper’s wings. The male rubs a scraper(a sharp ridge on its wing) against a series of wrinkles on the other wing.   Grasshoppers make sound by scraping a row of pegs on their hind legs against their wing or body or by snapping their hind wings while flying. The grasshopper's hearing organ is a large membrane, or tympanum, on the first segment of its abdomen ( shown in picture below)

The tone of the chirping depends upon the distance between the wrinkles. You can even calculate a rough estimate of the outside temperature by a cricket's chirps. The frequency of chirping varies according to outside temperature.To obtain a rough estimate of the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit, count the number of chirps in 15 seconds and then add 37. The number you get will be an approximation of the outside temperature. Male grasshoppers make these chirps to attract mates. When a female hears a loud, strong chirp, she knows that the male is strong and large enough and would be the suitable father for her offspring.

You can tell the male from the female by noticing if they have something sticking out of their abdomen. If a grasshopper or cricket has a black tube sticking out of its abdomen, known as an ovipositor, it is a female. The ovipositor is used for laying eggs. Grasshoppers do not undergo complete metamorphosis, and so start their lives as miniature versions of their parents.

If you are interested in tracking grasshoppers and crickets, you can visit http://www.scistarter.com/, a website that includes many animal observing projects. Click on the link to see the site.  
In their search box, you can type in the name of whatever organism you are interested in, and you will see all the projects related to it. The way to participate in one of these projects is to take pictures of that particular organism and submit them. Scientists will view them and monitor the species to judge if they are endangered, and the most highly populous areas. Suggested grasshopper/ cricket projects are Camel Cricket Census, and, if you live in either Washington D.C, or Baltimore, Cricket Crawl D.C/Baltimore.

The Difference Between Grasshoppers and Crickets.