Scarce Bamboo Page

The Scarce Bamboo Page is gracing the display this month.  Its elegant, long wings are a rare lime green colour.  

We have never managed to breed this species and are hoping that this season we'll be successful.  To help them along, we put the heat up to a tropical 32C for a few minutes which gets them flying and feeding.  

Otherwise, we have about 40 species for the busy summer period which is just starting off.  

New Season

The butterfly house has been open a month now and the display is in full growth.  The cold winter had me borrowing oil from the local pony farm, funneling it in on those frosty windy nights as the tank sat on empty - the oil tanker couldn't get up the slope due to the ice. One night of heater failure and we loose six years of plants! 

We have changed our butterfly suppliers this year and we're looking forward to seeing lots of new species along with some of our old favourites.  

We also have a lovely collection of beetles including the handsome Hercules Beetle, Rainbow Stag Beetle and a huge green flower beetle from Africa. 

Moths out this week are Madagascan Moon Moth (http://www.magicoflife.org/butterfly_photos/Comet_Moth_Argema_mittrei.400.html), Giant Atlas, Luna Moth, Elephant Hawk Moth, The Polyphemus Moth with its beautiful purple eyes.

Neil

A rhino beetle emerges

A female rhinoceros beetle (Chalcosoma atlas) has emerged at the butterfly house in the last week.  She has been bred up from an egg laid more than two years ago and grew into a huge grub as thick as a man's thumb.  As a grub, she was fed rotten wood and occasional dog biscuits. As a beetle, she will feed on fruit smoothie and bananas.  She doesn't bite but she will quickly grab onto any unsuspecting finger with her pin-sharp claws; the only way to get her off is to put her in soil and encourage her to go underground.

Fifteen grubs of a related species of Rhino beetle (Chalcosoma chiron) are also being bred at the butterfly house and are currently about an inch long.

Giant moths and butterflies

There's a suite of large butterflies and moths that have emerged this week including the Philippine swallowtail, Atrophaneura semperi.  Semperi (see right) is one of the more majestic butterflies that we display.  The male has all black wings and a crimson head and body.  Semperi belongs to the fabled Birdwing tribe of Swallowtails that comprise some of the most spectacular butterflies in the world.  

We have some huge Atlas moths out at the moment - one female has a wingspan of 26 cm across.  The world record for an Atlas moth is 26.2 cm but this is from a pinned specimen with its forewings set at right angles to its body.  Another giant out this week is the Comet moth (Argema mittrei). We 

have three males emerged this week and are waiting for a female to try and breed them.  Most visitors assume these two species of moths are fake as they walk into the reception room.  We also have large caterpillars of moon moths chomping away, the Indonesia moon moth about the size of a man's finger (Actias maenas) and the rare Dubernardi's Moon Moth feeding on pine.  The latter caterpillar is green with dashes of shining silver like liquid mercury.  Both species will start spinning cocoons within the week. 

Largest butterfly migration for decades

Largest butterfly migration for decades - media release

Hundreds of thousands of Painted Lady butterflies (Vanessa cardui) reached the UK this week after a flying over a thousand miles from Morocco.  In a mass migration, the scale of which has not been seen for years, these butterflies can be spotted in almost every field and congregating in large numbers on butterfly nectar plants.  The Painted Lady is a pale orange-brown butterfly and is characterized by an extremely swift flight.  It is the

 mostly widely-distributed butterfly in the world being found on all five continents.

The migration has been tracked on butterfly and birdwatching forums as it moved north through Spain and France earlier in the year.  The main numbers reached the Wales just before the weekend and judging by reports there are more on the way.  Butterflies often congregate on hill tops and I counted over forty butterflies in the air at the same time near the Blaenplwyf aerial mask Aberystwyth.  There were over 400 butterflies on a half mile stretch of road there; something rarely seen nowadays.   Mostly the migration will be seen as the odd butterfly passing over a field every minute or so but this is happening all across the 

UK.  On the actual migration front, huge surges in numbers can been observed.  In one day in Norfolk last week, an astonishing 18,000 butterflies were recorded passing through.  Maybe once, just for once, we can catch a glimpse of what the countryside was like a century ago.  

Some people might assume that it is the sunny weather bringing the butterflies out but in this case it is just a coincidence.  The real reason for the migration lies in 

the fre

ak rains experienced last winter in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.  The resulting lush vegetation provided fodder for huge nu

mbers of caterpillars in January and February.  By the time these turned to adult butterflies, the food plants had all but disappeared spurring them to migrate to greener fields abroad.  In an interesting parallel, a similar mass migration of Painted Ladies is occurring in the United States, with the butterflies starting in the arid south-

western deserts and now moving north through the States.  Again, unusually heavy winter rains in the desert regions started the population explosion.

The Painted Ladies will lay their eggs on thistles in the UK which will be good news for farmers.  A few will lay on related sunflowers and possibly on some Mallow relatives in the garden.  These will produce further generations of butterflies, a few of which will make the return journey back to Morocco and Spain later on in the season.  In the meantime, we should enjoy a bumper summer season of butterflies. 

New Colombian butterflies emerging

We have some little-known butterflies coming out this week including Chesterton's Longwing (Heliconius erato chestertoni), which has a stunning navy blue sheen and a thick yellow bar on the hindwing.  We also have some new forms of Heliconius cydno and the doris Longwings as well as a new species of Owl butterfly.  All these species come from Colombia.

Last night the butterfly house was featured on HTV Wales news.  They came into film the Ulysses Swallowtail and the rainbow stag beetle which was stuck on my finger for the whole morning. 

Ulysses has come!

The Ulysses Swallowtail (Papilio ulysses) is surely one of the most colourful butterflies on the planet. We have seven of them out and flying this week and they change the whole display. This swallowtail comes from Australia and Papua New Guinea.  For once the Blue Morpho takes second place in the attention and remarks of our visitors.  Ulysses has an even deeper blue sheen and is also distinguished by its spoon-shaped tails.

We have a shipment of 200 pupae coming in from Colombia tomorrow.  This will give some new species for us including a blue form of the small postman (H. erato chestertoni) and three new types of glasswings.  Also we have three Polyphemus silkmoths (Antheraea polyphemus) out and lovely male Luna moth just pumping up its wings as I left this evening.