When you sit on a mower for a number of hours each week you have a lot of time to think, but, what to think about? Last week Mother Nature helped me out. She sent an eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly to keep me company. It was a male. Yep, you can tell the difference between a male and a female eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly.

Butterflies, along with their cousins, the moths, belong to the insect order “Lepidoptera” which translates into “scale-wing”. It is believed that butterflies evolved from the moths and were present as long ago as 100 million years, which would mean they co-existed with the dinosaurs for about 35 million years.

According to most recent studies, they originated in Central and North America and through time migrated to every continent on Earth except Antarctica.

They have been very successful with over 180,000 different kinds having been given scientific names!

Because they thrive in tropical jungles where collecting them is difficult, many Lepidopterists (a biologist that studies butterflies) believe that number is just the tip of the iceberg and that possibly over half a million different kinds of butterflies exist. If you want to discover a new species, head to South America, but some advice, take along plenty of mosquito spray!

Here in Nebraska, the number of different kinds of butterflies is around 109; however, not all of them are common. There are only about 30 common butterflies in the State. The others are rare or occasional visitors.

We are lucky because Nebraska sits in the middle of the country where we get northern butterflies, southern butterflies, eastern butterflies, and mountain butterflies.

Some species, like the monarch, painted lady, red admiral, and mourning cloak migrate through the state and overwinter down south. Others, like the eastern tiger swallowtails, live just one season and overwinter as small caterpillars.

Why are they called “butterflies”? Because, so many are yellow…like butter. Old English for butterfly is “buttorfleoe”, and it was once believed that witches changed into butterflies to steal food. I’m not too sure just how much food a butterfly could steal, but witches were blamed for basically everything in old England!

Butterflies are the classic example given in school of “complete metamorphism”. Tiger swallowtails start out as an egg laid on the underside of a leaf. The egg hatches into a caterpillar, which eats and eats and eats (read 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Carle).

If we ate like a caterpillar we would have to eat about 50 pounds of food a day! After a few weeks the caterpillar is fully grown and it forms a chrysalis. Within the chrysalis over the next couple of weeks, it changes into the adult form. The adult only lives a week before mating, laying eggs, and dying. That does make me sad because I know that when I return next week to mow again, the male tiger swallowtail that accompanied me last week will no longer be alive.

The good news concerning butterflies is that the eastern monarch butterfly population increased by 64% just in the past year. Their overwintering habitat has almost doubled in size, and those butterflies are presently all across the U.S. from the Rockies to the Atlantic Ocean and Mexico to Canada. I also saw a monarch the same day the swallowtail flew alongside my mower.