As long as you water your plants they will find the damp spots. Butterflies don't need a container just a damp spot in the soil. They certainly don't sip from standing water. If you water your plants, that's all you need to do.

Congrats on your natives - that's the best way to plant!
The soil most likely should be just wet, at least that's the only soil the local butterflies visit for "ground nectaring."
I've never done one of these myself, but I've noticed that butterflies seem to pick one damp spot on the ground and stay right at that spot, so I assume there's something in that particular place that attracts them. It could be some natural nutrients in that spot or maybe it's where some old dog poop was - I've read that they're going for minerals in the soil.
Maybe somebody else will know more about it. If I were doing this, I'd see if there was something I could add to the soil to make it more attractive to butterflies.
Sherry

Welcome Susan;
This is good timing. I was just researching puddling. I volunteer at an arboretum that has a butterfly house and we are installing a new puddling area. The butterflies like to puddle in the gravel walkway and someties get crushed by visitors :(. I found a couple of good papers where the researchers put out a variety of solutions and recorded butterfly preferences. First, different species like different things. No suprise there. The most universal thing is Sodium Chloride or simply table salt (without the added anti-caking ingredients and iodide, look for simply sodium chloride or salt,on the label). They like weak solutions. The researchers used well rinsed playground sand. So have fun! Take some pretty tin buckets, fill them with well rinsed playground sand, place them around your yard. Mix a weak salt solution, 1/4 teaspoon to 1 quart water, and place in the buckets. Add solution till full. You may have to add additional fresh water as it evaporates. Eventually, you will want to clean out the whole thing if it gets too yucky. Some butterflies need other butterflies to be attracted to a puddling site (so which came first the puddle or the butterfly?)you could try making some color copies of tiger swallowtails and attaching them to the puddling sites.

Another interesting thing is that some butterflies get protein from poo. I am never sure whether to be amazed or disgusted by this. Most of us on this board have stories to tell of beautiful butterflies and dog poo. Anyway, the scientists have studied this and have used albumin to attract puddling butterflies. We are going to try re-create this phenomenon using egg white powder. You can get this in the health food store. I will let you know how it goes. Good luck!

- Elisabeth

Yep, they are searching for sources of dissolved minerals and salts that are not available in nectar. These elements can be found in soils of all kinds. I can vouch that they love the red clay in my yard, but will also 'puddle' on moist gravel, etc. Use some plain sodium chloride and epsom salts to attract them.

butterflyman - thanks but we don't use a lot of water for our native plants. Hence the puddling question. :)

misssherry - thanks. That's what made sense to me - just wet.

bananasinohio - thanks for all this great info. I'm curious as to why sand and not soil? Are there nutrients in the sand?

I have a large saucer (16") that I filled with a mix of gravel and clay with gravel on the top and then filled it with water and put it out on a stump in the sun. I'll have to add something to it to make it a bit more enticing. I like the idea of adding some fake butterflies to encourage them. I've got lots of dog poop in the yard but somehow can't quite bring myself to mix it in the pot.

I'd love to put out some fruit for them but we have rats in the area and I fear that would just draw them closer to me.

The scientists used sand because they wanted to rule out any other salts in their experiments. They wanted to be able to say what types of salts attracted butterflies. Also, you probably don't want to use garden soil. It can harbor butterfly pathogens such at Bt. This is the bacteria that they have isolated and grown commercially as an organic pesticide. Somebody will probably say, I see butterflies drinking from mud (soil) puddles all the time, which is true. What you don't see is some of the butterflies dying some time later from bacterial and or viral infections. But I go on...

I think the FAQ page has a good method for hanging fruit from a tree.

-Elisabeth

Elisabeth - Thanks for the explanation. That makes good sense.

We don't use any pesticides in our yard but I suppose there could be stuff left over from years before.

Thanks again for the explanation. My garden is very young so it may be another year or so before I get much attention from the butterflies. I have a few Painted Ladies coming around but that's about all, so far. Other than that it is mostly bees, which are also welcome here. :)

Bt occurs naturally in the soil. There are hundreds of strains of it. The way that it kills is for a caterpillar to ingest it. Typically, they would not do this as they do not eat soil. However, if it is sprayed onto a food plant with an organic pesticide, or in the case of a puddling butterfly, mixed into the water with soil, it could kill them. So, even if you have not used it in your garden, it can be in the soil. That is why if you raise butterflies from caterpillars you have to be careful handling them if you have been digging in the dirt.

Don't worry too much. We weed all the time and then forget and handle caterpillars without too many accidents. Just something to think about. Just like changing the oil in your car, you should do it every six months or 3000 miles, right?

- Elisabeth

My brother did his PhD on Yellow Tiger Swallowtail DNA variation along the western coast of Michigan. I went with him once, to help collect specimens. Often we'd come across large groups of males "puddling". Frequently they'd be on a dead fish on the beach. I do remember my brother telling me they were obtaining necessary nutrients and minerals, and that the groups we'd find were exclusively males in mating mode (aren't they always?).

Martha