How to make your own butterfly feeder

Feed your local lepidoptera and keep the kids busy with this simple summer activity.

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Jo Price

Published: August 20, 2015 at 6:14 am

All illustrations by Alan Batley

Take a paper plate and make small four holes evenly spaced around the rim.

Thread a length of string through each hole, knot underneath and tie together.

Check your fruit bowl for any over-ripe fruit – bananas are particularly good.

Load up the plate and hang in a tree or bush, and watch to see if any butterflies come to feed.

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Jo Price

Deputy editor, BBC Wildlife Magazine

Jo Price is the deputy editor of BBC Wildlife Magazine. She trained as a journalist at Cardiff University and has been a member of the BBC Wildlife team for nine years, working in various roles. Jo commissions exciting natural history content and interviews experts for the magazine’s Wild Times section and discoverwildlife.com. She enjoys wildlife gardening to support an array of species, including a few hedgehogs: creating a hedgehog highway has resulted in the prickly mammals visiting her suburban garden to forage and hibernate. Jo spends her weekends exploring local nature reserves, Magor Marsh and RSPB Newport Wetlands, and going on countryside walks and bike rides with her family.

Illustrations by Alan Batley

How to make your own butterfly feeder

Take a paper plate and make small four holes evenly spaced around the rim.

Thread a length of string through each hole, knot underneath and tie together.

Check your fruit bowl for any over-ripe fruit – bananas are particularly good.

Load up the plate and hang in a tree or bush, and watch to see if any butterflies come to feed.

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