ITV presenter visits Butterfly World in St Albans

An ITV weather presenter enjoyed her pretty, live “butterfly brooch” while filming recently in St Albans.

Daybreak’s Laura Tobin visited Butterfly World on Wednesday April 9 to interview lepidopterist Louise Hawkins about the latest information on the UK’s butterfly “fight-back”.

Laura, whose broadcasting work has taken her across the world including Afghanistan and Canada, is apparently told most days that she looks like Kate Middleton.

After her visit to St Albans, she tweeted about seeing a selection of butterflies including one which landed on her jacket, prompting her to add, “Love my butterfly brooch”.

A recently published report from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme showed that butterfly numbers rallied last summer following their worst year on record.

Some 46 out of the 56 species studied in 2013 recorded an annual increase compared to 2012 - the worst butterfly year since the research began in 1976.

A spokeswoman for the Butterfly World project said that when the attraction opened in Chiswell Green in 2009, it was a bare piece of earth with no resident butterflies.

She said: “Less than five years later 28 different British species have been recorded here, making it one of the best butterfly sites in the district.”