/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Hello.

As a project to make things more beautiful I have decided to breed local butterflies.

The reason for this is yesterday while I was planting strawberries, a large peacock butterfly came and landed on the patch and sat with me for a good 30 minutes, only to move to a window and sit for most of the afternoon.

It was a very spiritual experience and prompted me to firstly discover it's type, which I have not had the pleasure of seeing before - but also the desire to breed them for release.

The larvae are relatively cheap and these particular butterflies thrive on stinging nettles. Some varieties of the exotic prefer rotten fruit and citrus - however these will bring havok to the locality so can't be released.

A few monarchs have found there way across the ocean but we don't produce milkweed here.