How we manage our wildlife habitat can mean survival or NOT for the very creatures we attract. Leaving a dead tree standing, a branch with a “hollow” uncut, creating a loose brush pile of fallen limbs, not raking leaves – all of these choices just might mean that the Mourning Cloaks of your garden will survive the winter.
This is one of the few butterflies that survives the winter as an adult, hibernating in a sheltered nook: a hollow tree, in under shutters or shingles, behind a loose piece of bark, in a wood pile, or a “butterfly house.”
Sutton’s butterfly house (outside the deer fencing)
Our own butterfly house looks nothing like one of the commercial butterfly houses that you’ve probably been given by a well-meaning friend. It’s a simple structure of criss-crossed tree limbs with roof shingles between some of the layers to keep out the weather. And it works far better than a store bought butterfly house.
Hibernating Mourning Cloak roosting near bottom of door
Close up of hibernating Mourning Cloak inside Lynne Tarves’ shed
As I write this now, in mid-January, a friend has found two hibernating Mourning Cloaks in her outdoor shed. Both are roosting low to the ground (between six inches and one foot). They must have entered the shed one fall day when the door was ajar.
Some over-wintering Mourning Cloaks are quite ragged by spring
The Mourning Cloak is a true harbinger of spring. On the first warm days of winter, in late February and early March, we prowl woodland roads looking for and finding basking Mourning Cloaks on warm sand and asphalt roads. If winter rears its ugly head again, Mourning Cloaks go back to their sheltered nook to hibernate again until the next spring-like day. You can be sure that the first warm days in February and March my friend will be leaving her shed door ajar.
It is a quite a treat to find a butterfly or moth caterpillar feasting on its favored host plant. So imagine our surprise when on May 22 we discovered over one hundred Mourning Cloak caterpillars on one of our many Dwarf Hackberry trees (Celtis tenuifolia), here in Cape May County, New Jersey.
Over 100 caterpilalrs on our Dwarf Hackberry, May 22
They moved in unison
In Rick Cech and Guy Tudor’s excellent book, Butterflies of the East Coast: An Observer’s Guide, we learned that the adult lays clusters of up to 30-50 eggs. The caterpillars that hatch are communal and thrash in synchrony if disturbed. We were mesmerized and followed their movements day after day until a commitment took us out of town. Upon our return, they were gone, having wandered off to pupate.
A Red Admiral and a Mourning Cloak feeding on sap.
This beautiful butterfly, so named because it resembles a velvet coat edged in gold that one might wear when “in mourning,” is attracted to rotting fruit and sap flows on trees.
Rarely Mourning Cloaks come to nectar
Though once in a while you may find it nectaring at flowers, as we did here.
If a tree falls in your woods, consider cutting it into pieces and making your own butterfly house as we did. Mourning Cloaks, Question Marks, and Eastern Commas will all benefit, as well as many other overwintering insects.
© 2012, Pat Sutton. All rights reserved. This article is the property of Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens. If you are reading this at another site, please report that to us
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great post! i will try making a butterfly house too – we certainly have the wood for it!
how big is your dwarf hackberry, and where did you find it? we’re in the hudson valley area of ny and that is a tree that i would like to have as i know it’s valuable to wildlife and insects.
cheers!
Hi Julianna — YES create your own butterfly house with excess wood and I’m sure you’ll attract and benefit overwintering butterflies.
Dwarf Hackberry is the common hackberry in southern New Jersey. This tree’s common name is misleading since I’ve seen some huge ones in the dunes at Higbee Beach Wildlife Management Area at the very southern tip of NJ. The ones on our property are 20-30 feet tall. Their fruits are eaten by the birds and many, many seedlings come up in our woods. I’ve potted up and given dozens of babies away during the “Tours of Private Wildlife Gardens” that I lead each July, August, and September. Dwarf Hackberry is a southern tree that grows as far north as NJ, CT, and the USDA site shows it growing in Michigan and Ontario too (but not NY state). But I’m sure you can find Common Hackberry trees available; Mourning Cloaks (and Hackberry Emperors, Tawny Emperors, Question Marks, and American Snouts) will also use lay their eggs on them.
Pat Sutton recently posted..Mourning Cloaks in the Garden
AWESOME! This was the first caterpillar I ever followed from larva to adult!
Hi Dan, isn’t that THE most fun . . . to observe and learn about the entire life cycle of a butterfly or moth. Neat that the Mourning Cloak was your first.
Pat Sutton recently posted..Mourning Cloaks in the Garden
With all this warm weather we’ve been having this winter, I would not be at all surprised to see one of these beauties flying around my wildlife garden on a sunny afternoon in January! Wonderful article and photos
Carole Sevilla Brown recently posted..Reflection and Anticipation
Hi Carole, keep your eyes peeled. A bunch of butterflies were seen here in southern New Jersey between January 1st and the 12th, including a Mourning Cloak on January 6th, several Monarchs at Cape May Point, a bunch of Orange Sulphurs, a few Red Admirals, and a few Anglewings (either Question Marks or E. Commas). Bizzzzzzaro!
Pat Sutton recently posted..Mourning Cloaks in the Garden
Thanks for the photos and information, Patricia. We had two Mourning Cloaks on Common Milkweed in our Lexington, Kentucky backyard two years ago. I think they are quite special and I hope for a repeat. We have a regular woodpile but I like your example of a butterfly house and will see if I can do something similar. Thanks, too, for the your book, “How to Spot Butterflies”. It increases my hopes of of finding more butterflies next summer.
Betty Hall recently posted..Three Tough Plants
Hi Betty, neat that you’ve encountered Mourning Cloaks in your backyard. I’ll bet they’re using your woodpile for the winter, so lift off wood with care and keep alert for them. Sounds like there’s a woodpile butterfly house in your backyard’s future.
Glad you like our book, “How to Spot Butterflies.” We had great fun with it and I think it will open your eyes to many more butterflies next summer.
Pat Sutton recently posted..Mourning Cloaks in the Garden
Wonderful photos of the whole lifecycle Pat. I love mourning cloaks, after a long Minnesota winter it’s a real treat to see one in late March.
Heather
Heather recently posted..Native Plant of the Week: Pale Corydalis ~ Corydalis sempervirens
Hi Heather, I know just what you mean about Mourning Cloaks being such a treat after a long winter. Our winters are often cold-in-your-bones winters (because we’re next to the Atlantic Ocean). We look so forward to late winter / early spring days with temperatures over 55 degrees and often play hookie so we can go looking for Mourning Cloaks, Question Marks, and E. Commas – often with success. 55 degrees is the key for us.
Pat Sutton recently posted..Mourning Cloaks in the Garden
Sadly Pat this is one butterfly I would not see in NY. I do get the occasional Eastern Comma so the homemade butterfly house sounds perfect for them, and I will have to find a perfect spot for it. Our weather is cold and wintry now so I do not expect to see any butterflies until April. Usually it is the Eastern Comma.
Donna@Gardens Eye View recently posted..Exploring Color-Orange on GBBD
Hi Donna, don’t give up. Mourning Cloaks are found throughout the northeast, including New York. Plus you have two butterflies that overwinter as adults (like the Mourning Cloak) that we don’t have here in southern New Jersey, the Milbert’s Tortoiseshell and the Compton Tortoiseshell. I’ll bet if you create a homemade butterfly house like ours next summer, you’ll see more of these gems the following spring.
Pat Sutton recently posted..Mourning Cloaks in the Garden
Pat, What a great post. The photos are so helpful and explain some of the things I’ve been seeing in my garden over the past year or two. I’ve got a shed that I certainly hope is home to some overwintering butterflies. I’m going to go out there and take a look around at the ‘dust’ and see if anything looks like the photos.
Debbie Roberts recently posted..6 Plants for Attracting Beneficial Insects
Hi Debbie, I have a shed too, but don’t keep the door open enough that a Mourning Cloak might winter inside . . . unless they can crawl in through a crack at the bottom of the door. But, take a peek and just maybe! More likely, though, would be a nook in under bark (pulled away from the trunk of a tree), a hollow in a tree, a wood pile, or even in loose leaf litter.
Pat Sutton recently posted..Mourning Cloaks in the Garden
Another great post Pat.
Will the discarded Christmas trees (no tinsel – only plain) I collected, to create brush piles in the my deer eaten woods, help?
Hi Pat,
It’s late Oct here in Calgary. It’s -7 Celsius outside. We found a morning cloak butterfly inside the house. We thought maybe we can take the poor thing to the zoo’s butterfly house. But now we know these butteries actually hibernate, we are not sure what to do. Any recommendations on how to help this butterfly survive?
Thanks.
Carol
Hi Carol, OH my! As you can see from my post above, Mourning Cloaks winter as adults in safe nooks inside wood piles, hollow trees, under a bit of bark that is pulled away from the trunk, under shutters and shingles … all OUTSIDE . . . or, as in the case of the 2 Lynne Tarves found (photo above), outside but in a sheltered spot like inside her shed (she has no idea how they got inside). Butterflies, being solar powered, can not fly when it’s cold. We look for them flying on warm winter or early spring days once temperatures reach 55 degrees F (I think that’s about 12 Celsius). So, what you could do right now (with temperatures being too cold for it to fly) is put it outside in a sheltered spot. If you have a shed (that is the same temperature as the outdoors) it might be ideal to put it inside this shed and let it cling to a rafter or other piece of wood). Maybe once (if) it warms up, put it outside so it can find a safe outdoor nook to winter in & fly when temps warm up in the spring (otherwise, if you leave it in your shed, you’ll have to leave the shed door open on warm days so it can fly out). Good luck!
Pat Sutton recently posted..Hibernaculum: Winter Home to Red-spotted Purple
Hello. I was actually searching the web because I have a question that is a bit specific. I live in the lower part of Michigan and I had a pile of 2x4s behind my barn, that my Dad decided he had a use for. So we loaded them up, not realizing we were disturbing a Mourning Cloak Butterfly. I took it inside, not knowing anything about them. It’s been staying in one of my potted plants with some dried leaves. I’ve tried giving it sugar water, but was wondering if it would be better to leave it alone and let it hibernate. My house stays between 60 and 65, but there is a back room that stays about 10 degrees colder. It’s been relatively inactive, but still flutters every now and then. I was just wondering what the best way to handle this would be. I would really love to be able to let it go in the spring.
Hi Devon, What a find that must have been. Only a few butterfly species survive the winter as adults, including Mourning Cloak. They do so outside, so keeping the butterfly in your house or even in your back room where it’s 50-55 degrees would not be good for it — too warm. Through the winter they’re not meant to feed, but to sleep the winter away. Butterflies are solar powered, meaning they can only fly when they’re warm enough. The difficulty now is that the butterfly is sluggish because winter has set in and it can’t easily fly around outside to find a new safe place to survive the winter (now that the pile of 2X4s are gone). Is your Barn unheated? That might be the best & safest spot, if so. Find a nook somewhere off the beaten path inside the Barn (or a protected outside spot) and place it on a wall. If the Barn is heated, maybe you have an outdoor shed or some other sort of shelter where you could place it on a wall (much like in the photos in my post)? You might want to create a butterfly house wood pile with roof shingles between each row of wood for next year’s overwintering butterflies, now that you know you’ve got them. See the photo of ours in my post. I’m planning on writing a piece for Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens on just how to build a butterfly house wood pile next month. So, check back. Good luck!
Pat – excellent information and pictures here! I always worry about the Cloaks and other critters that might be sheltering in our slowly dismantled firewood pile over the winter – although we do have a barn that supplies quite a bit of shelter. Thinking next year of covering our wood pile with a tarp for the month or two after we stack wood in the fall, to discourage anybody from taking up residence, and then removing the tarp once winter has really set in (stacked wood needs to breathe). Need a hang a little “No Vacancy” sign when they’re scouting for a place to stay
Ellen Sousa recently posted..Use Your Weeds! Violets as Groundcover
Tis a dilemma indeed. Next winter let me know if your tarp in late fall works. How many overwintering butterflies have you found in your woodpile over the years? Curious. A few a winter, many a winter . . .
Pat Sutton recently posted..How to Build a Butterfly House
Pat, I have not seen any, but that’s only because when I’m collecting wood in winter I’m generally not looking – usually it’s very cold and I am in a hurry
Thank you, there is my first New Years Resolution, to begin looking in the woodpile and relocating any refugees I find! I have found Eastern Commas in the house before, as woodpile refugees I believe. We see quite a few of those butterflies here, probably due to lots of dead trees (dripping sap) and stinging nettle, which is one of their caterpillar host plants. Have seen Mourning Cloaks flying in late summer so I need to look for their winter hiding places…
Ellen Sousa recently posted..Use Your Weeds! Violets as Groundcover
Ellen, in the brrrrrrrrrrrrr cold I can believe that there isn’t time to be on the lookout for sleeping beauties. Too they’d be so camouflaged you might miss them even if looking closely. Once warmed up in your house and flitting about, that would be the time to relocate them in an untouched corner of the woodpile or in a newly constructed butterfly house. Enjoy these camouflaged beauties!
Pat Sutton recently posted..How to Build a Butterfly House
Well, Pat, after my yoga instructor taught me how to be mindful of my surroundings even when travelling at a high rate of speed, looking for camouflaged critters would give me something to focus on instead of the sub-zero temps or whatever freezing precip is swirling around me
Thank you. Always striving to improve everyday things under my control! Pat, have a great holiday and a new year without the weather drama of the last…
Ellen Sousa recently posted..Use Your Weeds! Violets as Groundcover
Right back at ya, Ellen! Wishing you a great holiday and new year!
Pat Sutton recently posted..How to Build a Butterfly House