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.

Transcript

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.