Wednesday
18th January
http://www.butterflyfarm.co.uk/attraction/index.php
Back
with Mum and Dad for a few days, time to catch my breath as things
are so busy at the moment. What with working at the Butterfly farm,
proof reading the first of my hopefully soon to be published books
about the Biking Birding years and sorting out all the various
projects, things have been thankfully hectic. I would have it no
other way. I love life!
Saturday
at the Butterfly Farm entailed gluing carefully dozens of butterfly
pupae to sticks to be placed in the hatchery. The amazing tactics of
the pupae to stay hidden from predators when in their natural habitat
is shown in the beautiful colours and deceptions.
Some,
like Morho peleides, the Blue Morpho, have pupae
that look like unopen flower buds. The pupae of Caligo
memnos, the Giant Owl Butterfly, is a perfect dead leaf,
if rather a plump one!
Raindrops
keep falling on my head, the metallic gold of Tithrea
harmonia, the Harmonia Tiger Wing, is stunning. A small
pupae that glistens with pure gold.
Then
there is the 'don't touch me – I don't taste good' pupae, such as
the spiky, dark brown pupae of Hypolimnas bolina,
the Eggfly Butterfly.
Green
pupae, yellow pupae, so many colours and sizes yet all a miracle of
packaging containing the soup that will become the adult, imago
butterfly.
Showing
these to the many visitors that came through the doors was such great
fun that I was there for seven hours. Coffee brought to me went
undrunk and I refused all offers of taking a break.
There
were also large cocoons of the Giant Atlas moth, Attacus
atlas, to show with three adult moths hanging nearby on
the two bushes kept for that purpose in the Discovery room.
I know
I overuse the word but the privilege of hearing from such diverse
people, one a professional singer, with their stories, likes and
dislikes; listening to their questions and answering if I could (no,
a proboscis doesn't suck blood!) and seeing the excited faces on so
many children when a pupae wriggled or they held the Giant Atlas moth
cocoon and felt the large pupae inside, is truly wonderful.
Monday
was pupae arrival day, 20,000 from around the World, so there's the
all hands to the pump, sorting, counting and checking day.
Orders
to be made and packaged to send pupae off to customers in Portugal,
Italy, Czech Republic and further.
Feeding Colin the blue-tongued skink is easy as he takes prawn and small pieces of fish, trying to feed the Peruvuan iguanas and the chameleon is less successful. they don't want any food.
Tuesday,
spiders and cockroaches, crickets and leafcutter ants; find the first
three and persuade them to relocate and clean out and provide leaves
for the latter. Madagascan hissing cockroaches have escaped and
whilst removing spiders webs in the main flight area, I find a few
and put them back in their house in the Minibeast Metropolis.
John
shows me how to carefully take the denuded privet twigs out without
the ants biting. Once new material is placed in the tank, the speed
in which the ants cut the leaves is incredible. There are ants
carrying within minutes. There is a long rope dangling from the
ceiling from the leaf tank to the nest tank. It is 15 metres long.
One
visitor wants to know what the equivalent distance would be for
humans. So imagine an ant two metres long, this would make the rope
six kilometres long! The ants take around fifteen minutes to get from
one end to the other. Twenty four kilometres an hour, speedy little
things.
OK,
all figures are all approximates but one can only marvel at the work
ethic of the female ants. Yes, all of the worker ants are female.
Of course I take photographs of the butterflies and moths!
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