Does anyone have experience with making a butterfly puddle?
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What’s that?
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I haven’t made a successful one, mostly because I forget to keep it wet.
However, I have rocks (stones) on sand around the perimeter of my house. The butterflies come to drink when it is wet.
I find them often in the road which is sand/dirt.
I think compressed wet sand is best, keeping it wetted is the key. Then a variety of different sized stones to stand on.
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I worked in a park where people would bring their horses, and butterflies would often congregate on piles of drying horse dung on the trails. I wanted kids at our visitor center to get to see these butterflies, so I moved a little bit of this dung to a spot next to the parking lot. There were no butterflies on it for a few days, but then one day the next week there were several butterflies all around it, lapping up the tiny drops of fluid that had come to the surface.
I have heard this behavior referred to as mudding, mud-puddling, or puddling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puddling_(behavior)
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Yes, I often find them on feces of dogs, cats, coyotes, not sure they are particular as long as it’s fresh enough to be fairly moist.
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I went with horse dung because it doesn’t have as much of a smell.
I worked at a stable, it has a definite odor. It smells better to me than the others. Living near farms, yes, I can smell the differences between cow, horse, sheep and pig. I don’t really consider it a talent though.
Yikes! That’s off topic!
Use clean sand for the puddle! And lots of stones!
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