Even on those dull rainy days here at the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary, we still have enough butterflies flying in the aviary to make it worthwhile for people to come in. Winter has been especially hard for all the staff we have working in our breeding laboratory in that because it was so cold, most of the caterpillars took twice as long to complete the larva stage. In order to keep the numbers up, lab staff were faced with feeding (and cleaning up after) twice as many caterpillars as what they usually do. So, where normally we would have approximately 23 boxes of Ulysses caterpillars in various stages, this winter at one stage there were 45 boxes. The same went across the board for all the 8 species of butterflies we breed here. All these boxes had to be opened up, the plants taken out, fresh plants put in, the box cleaned and the caterpillars counted.

Couple this with the fact that the food plant is much harder to source in winter, (so they had to be very careful with how much food to put into the boxes), and that gathering of the plants takes much longer because it doesn’t grow as quickly in winter, and you can see how much of an extra load they’ve had to shoulder over the past four months.

So, here’s a really big thank you to all the staff in the laboratory that kept it all going, and still had the time and energy to point out interesting things to our visitors as they were observing them at their work.

Our wonderful Laboratory staff, Fokje, Zsuzsanna, Mark and Robin…….p.s. the beer bottles are to put the food plants into, not the reason the laboratory workers are looking so happy!

All our caterpillars successfully went into the cocoon stage. We’ve got them hanging up, as you can see, in a large box, all of them able to access a rough surface so that they don’t slip as they pull themselves out of the cocoon.

Unlike all our butterflies, we don’t need to provide a flight aviary for these moths to complete the final stage of their lives, that is mating and laying eggs. These moths do not fly, they crawl along until they find a mate and then mate, sometimes for up to 24 hours. We don’t even need to feed them as they don’t have anything to eat with. They are due to start emerging around the 20th of October, so if you are in Kuranda and thinking of visiting the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary, keep an eye out for these in our laboratory viewing area.

We are constantly learning new information regarding these moths. Apparently temperature and light determine whether or not the eggs go into diapause, (when the embryo within the egg will stop growing). When eggs are kept in cool condition with less than 13 hours light, the adults from these eggs will lay eggs that do not go into diapause. So that’s what we are hoping to achieve for the next few generations, and then the last generation we will try and keep them in warmer conditions so that they will “winter over”. We can’t breed these caterpillars during the winter months as they mulberry trees all lose their leaves during this time.

Our laboratory staff have been super busy this winter and especially in the last few weeks.
With it being so cold this year, the caterpillars, despite having had the  heater on every night to keep it nice and warm for them, still slowed down  their rate of growth  - A LOT!  With the warmer weather in the last  10 days, the smaller caterpillars that  hatched in the last week are growing much quicker, which means they are  catching up to the slower growing caterpillars that hatched 11 to 18 days ago.
And of course the bigger a caterpillar gets, the more it eats so that now,  while laboratory staff normally feed our Ulysses caterpillars about 3 bunches  of melicope elleryana per day, lately they have needed 6 bunches a day to keep  them all fed. Normally we have about 20 or so boxes of Ulysses caterpillars in  varying sizes, we now have 41 boxes! Multiply that effect by the number of  different species we raise (9 in all) and you’ll understand why they are  looking forward to things normalizing in the next few weeks. Here’s what’s  happening in our laboratory.

Meanwhile, the Ulysses girls are making sure they don’t run out of work. Here’s some footage we took the other day in the aviary. As you can see, the Ulysses are laying their eggs faster than out guide Suzy can collect them.today.

We’ve been running trials to see how best to look after our silk moth caterpillars. We
thought they would do best in low light conditions but no, they like lots of
light. They are also not worried about what sort of Mulberry leaves they eat.
We tried one lot on Black Mulberry and one on White Mulberry, thinking that
that would make a difference to the colour of the silk that they spin, but
again we were wrong – the colour is the same regardless of what they’ve eaten.
They started spinning their cocoons a few days ago and here’s a photo taken
yesterday. Aren’t they beautiful!

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There is nothing better than seeing a group of people walking around the Wildlife Habitat in the mid afternoon still wearing their BWB stickers (Breakfast with the Birds) , it means they have spent the whole day at the Habitat looking at and experiencing our furry and feathered friends.

These three want to wear the animals home on their heads. Kids and adults of all ages come here to have fun, learn a little and experience Mother Nature in a safe, clean and reasonably close to natural environment. Come to the Wildlife Habitat for a little while and go wild.

We are privileged to be part of the Mossman Gorge Gateway Project’s Ready to Work program.

It has been a fantastic learning curve for both the Wildlife Habitat team and the local indigenous trainees.
The trainees are working under the Ready for Work Program that teaches them the skills to adapt into the everyday work force; it is one of the main aims of the program, along with full time
employment at the Mossman Gorge Visitor Centre.  The Ready to Work Program has and will continue to be fun for every one involved.

Whilst at the Habitat the trainee’s do all sorts of work, including Food & Beverage, Maintenance, Landscaping and have some involvement with the Wildlife Department. These trainees have become
important members of our team. During their time here they have found out a lot about themselves, juat as we have.

Lenny (far left) wants to become a chef, he is doing a great job cooking for our Lunch with the Lorikeets feast. The ladies are also chipping in to make sure our visitors enjoy their meals.