Commissioner's idea makes Lake Tobesofkee home to butterfly garden

Showing off Bibb County's latest effort to draw visitors to Lake Tobesofkee, Bert Bivins pried open a folded spice bush leaf to reveal what looked like the head of a snake no longer than a fingernail.

Tan above, white below, it appeared to be peering up at the Bibb County commissioner. But the reptilian markings are the unusual disguise of a caterpillar that will, with a little luck, become a swallowtail butterfly one day.

It lives in a 40-by-100-foot butterfly garden in Claystone Park. The brightly colored natural attraction, Bivins' idea, cost only about $1,500 to create near the camping area, said county engineer Ken Sheets. The work was all done by county employees and Bivins, who paid for some of the plants himself, Sheets said.

The county plans to add benches and make the garden the beginning of a trail through the woods, Bivins said, and a resident has volunteered to label all the plants. Bivins, a retired teacher, hopes classes learning about metamorphosis can take some of the caterpillars and raise their own butterflies, possibly visiting the butterfly garden on field trips. Just a few months after work there began, tiny skipper butterflies zipped around the garden while larger, orange-patterned gulf fritillaries drank from zinnias.

Black-spiked fritillary caterpillars were munching so enthusiastically on wildly wiry purple passion vine that Bivins had to plant more Wednesday. He has a new appreciation for the vine he called a "maypop" as a child. Back then, its chief attraction was the bulbous green fruit it provided to throw at his buddies. Bivins first became interested in planting flowers for butterflies when his own children were small. "So I planted flowers, but the first year, I still didn't see butterflies. I remembered my grandmother had flowers butterflies used to be found on -- flowers I wasn't that fond of -- but I planted them and had butterflies."

Those zinnias started his research. Bivins and county employees learned as they planned the garden, focusing not only on the nectar butterflies enjoy sipping, but also the plants where they lay their eggs.

Jerry Payne, a retired entomologist who lives in Bibb County and organizes the butterfly counts for the state, praised the efforts to provide host plants for caterpillars.

"Most people when they garden for butterflies manage it as a pub to attract adult butterflies," Payne said. "They gather there to drink liquor and meet chicks. But you should grow your own butterflies, too."

For monarch caterpillars, milkweed is delectable, while black swallowtails lay their eggs on parsley and fennel.

Bivins said he has contacted garden clubs in hopes that volunteers will help maintain the garden in future years.

"It's worthwhile because the amount of butterflies in Georgia is like dropping a feather in the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo," Payne said. "We still haven't heard it yet."

This year Payne found butterfly populations lower than he has seen them. Only about half the usual number of species have been seen during Middle Georgia butterfly counts, and total numbers of butterflies are down about 30 percent.

Payne said he thinks the butterfly garden will draw older residents and young people to Claystone Park.