Monday, January 23, 2012

Butterfly Garden

The last time I went to the butterfly garden at the Strong Museum of Play, I was with Ivan and I did not have a camera. I have learned since then! But all I learned was to bring my camera; I haven't learned how to take good pictures, especially of butterflies. Are you aware of how infrequently butterflies sit still? I sure am. Most of my pictures look like this:

This is a red lacewing, not that you can tell.
Harumph. The turtles, however, were cooperative.

This spot is the best spot and no other spot will do.

Another 48 hours in here and he'll confess, trust me.
Since the butterfly garden is sweltering hot, it doubles nicely as a greenhouse. Otherwise they probably could not call it a garden. It would be a butterfly warehouse. Which no one would pay to see, especially if there was no soothing spa music playing. In the garden, they had a lot of orchids, as well as these flowers that I think might be a kind of shrimp plant, even though their bracts are green and their flowers aren't nearly as alien-looking as golden shrimp plants:

It's misleading because the bracts are green, like leaves.
They may be undercover.

They also had this strange round species of flower that was very attractive to butterflies:

That leaf is a butterfly, by the way. And some people doubt evolution, pffft!

I did manage to get one pretty nice butterfly shot, and a moth:

I can't figure out what these are and it's really annoying me.

Giant Owl (a confusing name, in my opinion)

A blue morpho landed on my shoe, which I seem to remember happening the last time, too. They must be the friendliest of all the butterflies, because I tried to hug several of the others, and they weren't having it.

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