Butterfky Bush

Butterfly Bush and Earl Plato
Greetings from cousins in Norway on this bright, late August day, 2006. These words “ We have had a hot summer too -25-30 Celsius.” Small world we live in. I have butterfly bushes and in a previous article mentioned butterflies coming to feed on them. One species was the beautiful Red admiral. Guess what? My cousin sent to me as an E-mail attachment from near Oslo, Norway. There feeding on my cousin’s butterfly bush blossoms was clearly a Red admiral! The photo could have been taken here in Ridgeway. Thanks for sharing, cousin.
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I was talking about them this week. I had not seen any yet this summer. Elaine and I were away on a day bus trip when they arrived at our butterfly bushes. Thank goodness three of our grandchildren and their parents came over. They saw two of them. Have you ever seen Hummingbird hawk moths ? This moth unlike most moths is seen on clear sunny days. Many people confuse them with hummingbirds because of their colouration and their movements. Our moths were about two inches (5 cm) long. From an earlier photo I took they have an olive-green body with red bands across their abdomen. They move quickly darting here and there on our Black-eyed susans and our butterfly bushes. Tuffs of hair at the end of their abdomen look like feathers. Watch them if you can as they feed. They have a long, thin needle-like mouthpiece called a proboscis by which they feed. As they come to flowers they uncoil their proboscis deep into the flower where the nectar is. Like a humingbird, eh.
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Friend Jerry Rising, nature writer for the Buffalo News, shares this about The Pests of August. “Never slap a yellow jacket against your body. They emit pheromone that leads others to attack.” I know as a youth I asked boyhood friend, Ken, to slap the yellow jacket on my back. Six more stings later I learned the lesson! Don’t want yellow jackets around? Keep foods covered, clean up garbage and pick ripe fruit from your garden. Use perfumed scents sparingly at this time of the year- they attract yellow jackets. Stay away from their nests. Remember they can fly faster than you can run!