Joann Merritt's Essays

A Naturalist's Christmas Tree
February 1990

With old fashioned Christmas Spirit in our hearts we drove to the Lindsey Ranch south of Rankin where we selected and cut our own cedar Christmas tree. This same spirit prevailed when we returned home so we decided to make our own ornaments. Since doing something other than the norm presents no problem to Don and me we picked butterflies for our Christmas motif.

We placed the tree about ten feet outside our double glass doors where it could be seen from the living area of our house. I drew patterns of butterflies, caterpillars, chrysalides, cowpen daisies, sunflowers and their leaves. Don kept the sawdust flying as his scroll saw cut out the ornaments. I kept my pencils busy drawing and coloring the features for each species of butterfly, petals on the flowers, and butterfly eggs on the leaves. We completed wooden replicas of 27 species of butterflies, and included the complete life cycle of a Bordered Patch Butterfly. We even made our own Ivory soap “snow”, but we confess that we used store bought lights on the tree.

We attached pieces of oranges, pears and bananas to the branches, hoping to attract and photograph real butterflies among our wooden ones, and a Red Admiral, Dainty Sulphur and Variegated Fritillary flew around the tree but did not stay to be photographed.

Don painted a wooden Goatweed Butterfly florescent orange and strung it on a double fishing line which he attached to objects at opposite sides of the tree. He could make it “fly” back and forth but sometimes it would realistically flutter in the breeze without help from Don. A real Goatweed Butterfly stopped by (to check out the model?). It was so cold that we were able to carefully pick it up and place it on the tree in the sunshine. It fluttered down among the leaves we had used to cover the base of the tree where the brown dead leaf pattern of the closed wings made it nearly invisible. Occasionally it would open its wings with a gorgeous flash of orange-red, then quickly close them again. We could see how a predator might be startled by this maneuver. Don photographed the Goatweed to show both tactics: camouflage and surprise. Christmas gifts do not get better than this - and some people think there is no Santa Claus!

Would you believe our tree is a lister? It listed five species of butterflies and 49 people. Christmas decorations are gone now and the tree is working on its bird list. The Ruby-crowned Kinglet, scarcely larger than a butterfly, has been visiting regularly, possibly eating insect eggs. A Bewick’s Wren looked over the branches carefully several times. A Mockingbird flew through the tree just to scare away the House Finches and House Sparrows. We are keeping food on the tree hoping to attract more birds - not for ourselves, of course, but just to help our tree with its bird list.