Today is our last butterfly release day for summer 2024 (on Delilah’s birthday).

This is Bearsprings’ very own house butterfly, determined Delilah and today is her birthday!

An introduction to Delilah

Today is Delilah’s birthday! Delilah is a painted lady butterfly and despite having damaged wings after emerging from her cocoon, which left her unable to fly, she has always remained determined and able to adapt to her surroundings. Delilah does things her own way and behaves much more like a house pet than a wild butterfly.

Bearsprings invites you to take a look at her adventures on our blog post labelled ‘Delilah’s Diary’.

You can also learn more about butterflies on our ‘polinators fact file for children’ and ‘facts about painted ladies for children’ (both located within our pollinators campaign area).

Delilah’s relatives are strong and also very determined. This particular batch has two butterflies that often jump on eachother and will backflip onto their nectar soaked sponge or flowers.

This painted lady (not Delilah) has a very long black tongue called a proboscis. It looks like a long, thin black straw. This is what they use to drink their food, which is nectar (mostly sugar and water). They actually taste with their feet and not their tongues! This is how they know they landed on something delicious and should have a drink.

The children have been busy celebrating Delilah’s birthday throughout the summer and released our final batch of butterflies for the year on this special day.

You can also be a ‘determined Delilah’ and partake in your own pollinator activities. Some of our favourites were:

Making butterfly masks.
Wearing butterfly wings and taking our butterflies outside in their mesh house to teach them how to fly, by flapping our arms really fast.
Singing pollinator songs to them.
Showing them figures from the caterpillar lifecycle and explaining what changes happened to them.