Peacock Butterfly House - 2026
- Jul 25
- 1 min read
As part of our 2025/2026 Bolton's Fund project we decided to push ourselves by exploring a new conservation strategy, creating a butterfly house for educational purposes that we hoped would lead to us releasing butterflies on the Garstang Hub, this was an entirely new learning experince for us.
After the work was finished in the creation of a secure premise for our Butterfly House, we reached out to Ray Sandicroft for advice and guidance. When we first started Bolton Newt we had been incredibly lucky to meet Ray, we worked in partnership with him to release a thousand Red Admirals that he alone raised, on the town hall steps eight years ago.
This year, Ray kindly gave a talk to our regular volunteers, and we're incredibly grateful that he let us film him carrying out his Butterfly Conservation, sharing his indepth knowledge and expertise.
As our new Peacock Caterpillars adapted to their new home, we kept on top of the daily cleaning, providing fresh nettles to the caterpillars while monitoring for any parasitic wasps. Slowly they changed into a butterfly chrysalis, then we needed to wait 12 - 14 days for the butterflies to emerge. Once that metamorphsis had occured, it was time for the release of 15 Peacock Butterflies.
It was such a joy to see Freya's reaction to the release of the butterflies and it is something without doubt we will be pursuing next year to educate the local children and families of one of nature's most amazing and loved little creatures. Massive thanks goes out to Ray Sandicroft a local Breightmet Butterfly Conservationist legend.
Comments