There's a butterfly in my office .............

[Proto]

There's a blooming Red Admiral butterfly fluttering around my office, banging against the window trying to get out. I've mentioned to it that it's -3°C outside and it would be best to stay in, but it's not listening.

It appeared last Thursday, I thought it would be dead by the next morning, an unheated office in a rickety old farm building, and temperatures down to -6° overnight, but it wasn't. Thought the weekend would see it off, but no, it's still here.

Shouldn't these creatures be asleep, or dead, or something? Weird. Anyway I can help it survive?

 

[Gromit]

A little honey dissolved in some water might do it or a sugar solution.

 

[taxing]

My dad used to get loads of them (Red Admirals specifically, not just any old butterflies) hibernating on the top floor of his house, I guess because no one went up there during the week, it was just us kids at the weekend. It might have got in there thinking it'd be a nice place for a kip, then changed its minds when you showed up.

 

[661-Pete]

Red Admirals - and Painted Ladies - hibernate through the winter as adults. Unfortunately, the British climate is just a little bit too cold for them, so they usually don't survive the winter: the population that we see the following summer arises from migrants from mainland Europe.

Sometimes, if the winter is exceptionally mild, lots of these butterflies do survive the winter, and then we get a population boom the following summer. As happened with Painted Ladies last year. I couldn't begin to count the myriads I saw on the Downs...

But I don't hold out much hope, this time around... your butterfly is probably doomed .