Butterfly coloring pages collection. Print a free selection of butterfly coloring and drawing for children here.
The most extensive butterfly coloring collection you can find on the internet, download the butterfly albums below for free. You can print these coloring books directly or save them on your hard drive. Give back to these butterflies the beautiful colors they are usually adorned with.
You can’t help but notice the butterflies: their incessant ballet, from one flower to another, their shimmering color in the sun? A joy to the eye as well as a joy to the gardener, butterflies are excellent pollinators in the garden, vegetable garden, and orchard.
Their presence is proof that your garden is a quality environment, without chemicals. Save these auxiliary insects, whose population is inexorably decreasing, by offering them nectariferous plants and shelter from the elements and winter.
Butterfly Coloring Pages
Auxiliary Role in the Garden
Butterflies play an important role in pollination. As they visit each flower in search of nectar, they cover themselves with pollen, which they disseminate as they move from flower to flower. They thus ensure the fruiting of vegetable and fruit plants.
Butterflies and caterpillars have a bad reputation because they devour the leaves. However, if there are too many of them in the garden, and they cause significant damage, the birds in the garden will soon regulate the population!
Butterfly identity card
The butterfly belongs to the Lepidoptera family, and we distinguish between day and night butterflies. Currently, in France, there are 257 species of butterflies in the daytime, compared to 5,200 species of moths.
The butterfly is an insect whose body is divided into three parts: head, thorax, and abdomen. Their eyes are made up of thousands of small cells that make them very sensitive to colors, especially flowers, the butterfly would have a preference for the colors yellow and purple.
The wings of the butterfly are very fragile, and they are covered with scales. This is the “powder” that remains on the hands when you touch a butterfly, they have been torn off, and are unfortunately irreplaceable. This is why you should not catch a butterfly with your hands.
Butterflies are cold-blooded animals, so their body temperature depends on the outside temperature. Butterflies capture the sun and absorb its heat to fly. If the temperature is too low, they are unable to do so.
Butterflies are also very light, and they are toys of the wind if the wind is too strong for them. Then they need a shelter to take refuge in.
Butterflies Habitat
Butterflies need shelter to protect themselves from bad weather, wind, rain, cold winter weather, and to survive when the flowers are absent.
During the cold season, some species migrate to warmer regions, while others stay put and seek refuge in houses, attics, sheds, garden sheds, tree cavities, gaps in low walls, under leaves… Still, others are not adults at the time of winter: the caterpillars burrow into the ground or take shelter under plant debris. Eggs and pupae that do not need to feed are better able to survive the winter.
Butterflies Diet
The butterfly feeds on the nectar of the flowers; it has a trunk that it unrolls to suck up this sweet liquid. In-flight, it locates the flowers to be collected by their colors and the U.V. rays emitted.
The butterfly also drinks near ponds and puddles, for mineral salts…
Monophagous caterpillars devour the leaves of only one species of plant, called the host plant. The other caterpillars feast on any plant, knowing that they have a preference for nettles. Please make sure you always have some in the corner of your garden to spare ornamental and vegetable plants from their voracious appetite.
Butterflies Life Cycle
As the seasons go by, the butterflies go through different stages: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis before becoming an adult butterfly.
The female lays her eggs on plants that will feed the caterpillars (nettle, for example). The eggs hatch to give birth to caterpillars, which will quickly grow by eating leaves, multiplying several times their weight in a few weeks, and molting regularly.
When the caterpillar has reached a certain weight, it stops eating and turns into a pupa. It will remain in this form for a week to several months, depending on the weather and the species. From it will come out the imago: the adult butterfly.
It is at this stage that reproduction takes place, the butterflies secrete pheromones and engage in courtship rituals to attract the individual of the opposite sex. Depending on the species, the butterfly lives from a few days to a few months.
Against their natural predators (birds, spiders, amphibians, bats, lizards, shrews, wasps, dragonflies, etc.), butterflies can avoid their natural predators.), butterflies have developed different techniques: camouflage in caterpillars, through color, often green like the leaves they are busy eating, or mimicry in shape, resembling twigs. As for the butterfly, it impresses these predators by the design of its wings (the eye-spots of the peacock of the day, for example), which surprises the predator and allows the butterfly to flee.
Threats to the Butterfly
Many butterfly species are disappearing or becoming rare. In Europe, the number of butterflies living in grasslands has halved in 14 years. The main reasons for this decline are:
- the massive destruction or rarefaction of their habitats places linked to their survival and reproduction: hedgerows, wetlands, specific host plants of monophagous caterpillars, grasslands that contain many nectariferous plants…
- the use of chemicals: herbicides destroy the caterpillar host plants, and insecticides kill both insect pests and butterflies ;
- light pollution: night lighting exhausts moths, which generally head for the moonlight. They burn on contact with light bulbs and become vulnerable to their predators.
For effective and long-lasting protection of butterflies, take action in your garden, preserving their favorite plants, and stopping all chemical treatments!
How to Save Butterflies in Your Garden
- Ban exotic and foreign plants;
- Leave a corner of your garden wild: nettles and other “weeds” will attract caterpillars and other insects.
- Plant flowers rich in nectar, in the sun (for more sugar), with staggered flowerings to provide flowers to forage for as long as possible. Prefer simple shapes to double shapes.
- Plant particular butterfly flowering meadows, mowed only once a year in October with cornflower, poppy, daisy…
- Plant a mixed flowering hedge. The abundant species protect the butterflies from the wind, the many varieties ensure the presence of host plants for the different species of butterflies. For example, elm for the Robert-devil, willow for the great tortoise, aspen for the great Sylvain…
- Don’t forget the caterpillars: nettle, white stock, and umbelliferous plants such as perennial fennel and cumin are very popular plants for caterpillars, which will therefore not be interested in your ornamental plants.
- And to welcome the eggs laid by the females: nettle, alfalfa, thistle, clover, pope’s coin, dock, and grasses are indispensable host plants!
The flowers that are most popular with butterflies are those of fennel, sedums, rudbeckias, common oregano, caryopteris, speedwell, and the butterfly tree, of course.
Butterflies are particularly attracted to the flowers of lantana and shrub sage.
For the off-season, plant late-flowering flowers such as lespedeza or desmodium, shrub ivy (butterflies feast on flowers as well as fruit), or arbutus. For winter, plant heather, privet, lavender, and thyme.