Report a pest
Norm Twigge’s butterfly house at Te Puna Quarry Park. The shade cloth is just the standard green shade cloth available from Bunnings, Mitre 10 etc. The Biodynamic Unit at Lincoln University also have shadecloth for sale with a mesh of 0.6mm. It’s important that the mesh keep out wasps (and other predators and parasites). Black gives […]
Category Archives: Monarchs
Template for Flight of the Butterflies sculpture
April 26, 2015 – 10:29 PM
Here is the template to create butterflies to add to our overwintering colony. Template for butterflies Print off the A4 template and then separate the eight rectangles with the butterfly shapes. Fold each one in half and colour each monarch in so that they are lifelike: orange with black and white. Then trim around the […]
Oe (Ophryocystis elektroscirrha)
November 7, 2010 – 12:45 PM
Friends at the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA, gave us permission to upload a presentation about this Protozoan parasite that affects Monarch butterflies around the world. Download the presentation here: OE It is a pps file (shows in Microsoft PowerPoint). If you do not have this program, you […]
Possible OE infected butterfly
February 5, 2010 – 11:09 AM
As discussed with Jacqui. Found this butterfly sandwiched between two layers of windbreaker material. Had hatched from its chrysalis that was made between the two layers and I had no idea it was there. So not sure what the pupa looked like before it hatched. Butterfly is female, and has white tiny dandruff like stuff […]
Closeups of a Fresh seed
June 19, 2009 – 6:29 PM
6 shots of the SAME seed from different angles with a bit of added lighting. The swan the seed was taken from was just starting to split at the tip of the swan this a.m.. This swan did not have seeds that were all of a uniform colour. Some (about 30%) had blotches of orangy/brown. […]
Good and bad seeds
June 19, 2009 – 5:30 PM
I have no qualifications in seed grading, but the seeds in the attached photograph that are underlined in yellow (three of them I think) I would classify as being the very best quality seed. Perhaps some of the others would be fine too, but it is hard to know. My camera is not great – […]
