Butterfly Time

Right outside our office window is this lovely granite bird bath that's our bird spa, and flowers that attract butterfiles, including Purple Coneflower and the yellow Coreopsis, "Zagreb."

The Coreopsis is covered in little fluttering orange butterfiles that I'm watching now. It's a wonderful distraction from my work and a worthy blog topic.

Practically each flower has these "Pearl Crescent" butterfiles nectaring on it. What a treat to be look up from my computer and watch the butterflies.

We've written two books to help you attract and identify butterflies to your garden. Stokes Butterfly Book gives you plans for a butterfly garden, lists and photos of butterfly plants, and chapters, with color photos, on the identification, behavior and caterpillars of common butterflies.

Our Stokes Beginner's Guide to Butterflies has an easy key and beautiful photos to help you identify more than 100 butterflies, plus information on habitat needs, life cycle, food preferences of the butterflies and more. Both are available from amazon.com, or can be ordered through your bookstore.

This time of year, when the birds are busy feeding nestlings and fledglings, is a more quiet time for birds. But the butterflies are just gearing up. We love to go out in the garden and take walks to see how may species we can find. Hope you get out and enjoy the butterflies and plant a butterfly garden.