It will probably be in the bathroom of a cottage, or perhaps on a rarely heated floor. If he didn’t suddenly start flapping his wings, you might not even notice him. But now here it is, awake in the middle of winter and you’re panicking. What about a butterfly in the cold? “It’s actually not difficult to take care of him,” says Jana Bucharová in the podcast.
You can play advice not only about butterflies in winter here:
The joy is unreal. “Mom, mom, there’s a butterfly in the bathroom!” Maybe you experienced it too and then you just wondered in vain, what about him? Feed? Release? Leave it alone? “You can save a butterfly that wakes up in your home in the winter,” says Jana Bucharová, an expert in the magazine Receptář on garden topics, in the podcast.
Different wintering
Maybe you think it’s just a mistake. But while some species of butterflies fly to warm countries for the winter, others hibernate as caterpillars, and others hide in a chrysalis during the cold season, there are species that hibernate as adults. “In our case, mainly peacock-eye butterflies and nettle butterflies,” adds Jana Bucharová. “They’ll find a cool, sheltered place where it won’t freeze.” Which is naturally the hollow of a tree, but also a house where it’s not getting hot.
Temperature is key for them. And as soon as it warms up, perhaps because you arrive at the cottage and flood it, it wakes up.
Just a box
With an awakened butterfly, it’s actually not hard work at all. Just proceed quickly and at the same time as carefully as possible. “Catch him as carefully as possible so that you don’t rub the scales off his wings,” says Jana Bucharová. But first, prepare the most ordinary thing that you might not think of – a box. For example, one from shoes, in short, one into which air will flow.
Then take the box straight away to a cooler place, where you will certainly not heat it, but at the same time it will not freeze there and there is no risk of rain. The butterfly calms down very quickly and you just take the box outside in the spring and leave it open so that it can fly out comfortably.
When it fails
And what if it doesn’t work out and you just knock off the withered wings in the spring? “If it doesn’t work out, it’s not a tragedy,” says the expert. “Butterflies are short-lived, and it’s much more important that you have a garden that’s conducive to them in the summer. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to show up during the winter.”
