Wales Day 2

It was a showery, mild and misty day and after a bit of shopping in Abergavenny, we headed back up into Herefordshire to the delightful town of Symonds Yat and dropped into the Wye Valley Visitor Centre and the Butterfly Zoo. It was lovely to walk amongst so many species of exotic Butterflies such as The Monarch, White Tree Nymph, Mocker, Citrus and Scarlet Swallowtails; Banded King Shoemakers, Blue and White Morphos and the gorgeous large Caligo Memnons (The Owls) who were feeding off rotting Banana skins. The topside of their wings, which they opened very briefly, were a heavenly blue but I was never quick enough with the camera! One particular Blue Morpho seemed to become quite attached to me and often landed on my head or perched on my hand or camera. We used the magnifying glass provided and searched for eggs and caterpillars, which we found lots of.

One of my favourite species was this lovely Glasswing, Latin name: Greta Oto. The females only lay one egg per plant, a characteristic of all cannibalistic species. Adults search far and wide for mates and poisonous host plants their caterpillars eat with the journey recorded being over 40km in 24 hours. They are called the Glasswing Butterfly because of their wings being almost completely translucent, except for the opaque borders tinted dark brown with hints of red or orange. This see-through effect is due to the lack of coloured scales on the tissue between the veins. Combined with their dark body this is an ingenious kind of camourflage. We loved the Butterfly Zoo, but golly it was hot in there!!

NB. Can't add some extra photos for some reason?