Explore the Butterfly House at Tropical World Leeds
While the results of 'The Big Butterfly Count' are being compiled, we explore the Butterfly House at Tropical World.
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00Hi there, my name is Lisa Bath, I am one of the head keepers here at Tropical World in Leeds
00:06and today we're in the butterfly house. We've got a variety of animals in here, we have obviously got
00:12the butterflies which are the main attraction, like Tropical World is pretty famous for having
00:15its butterflies, so we've got quite a few flying around. We've done some work recently with other
00:20collections and just doing some research about how to improve our butterfly house, so we've got
00:26some new plants going in for butterflies to feed on, we've got a different variety of species to
00:31hopefully just get some more flying, so you see some flying around in the daytime and you'll also
00:36be able to see some flying around in the morning and evenings, just getting a good variety of
00:40butterflies in, but obviously as well as that you can see Crackle who's our mollusk crocodile down
00:45here and we've also got a terrapin pool, so there's quite a lot going on and this is just
00:49one house of Tropical World, so there's quite a few things just to see in the first house.
00:52We've been participating in the Big Butterfly Count, which is a little bit like the Big Garden
00:57Bird Watch but for butterflies, so what it does is it encourages people to download a form from
01:02the Butterfly Conservation and what happens is there's just a form you can get and it tells you
01:07the basic species of butterflies which you might see in your garden or surrounding area. Everyone
01:12should have sent their count in now to the Butterfly Conservation and they will run a
01:16tally of everything that they've seen. This is going to be really helpful for them and for us,
01:21it helps to give them an overview of wild butterfly populations in general,
01:26what areas we're seeing certain species, what they're attracted to. A lot of people really
01:30appreciate being able to see such exotic and colourful species so close up, they just fly
01:35around like you're not even there, so it's lovely to see. There's a lot as well, we've got feeders,
01:41so we've got some nectar feeders which are just sort of little homemade little cocktail glasses
01:47with sponges in that they like to feed on. We've got fruit platters for them, so there's always
01:51places where people can go and spot them feeding if they're not always flying around,
01:55so you get to see them at different stages, so I really enjoy it.