Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy

Brookside Gardens’ annual butterfly and caterpillar exhibit is going on now - continuing until September 25th. It’s best to go as early as possible since the conservatory where the exhibit is housed is about 10 degrees warmer than the outdoors. It if gets above 100 in the conservatory, they often close the exhibit; the butterflied like the heat but people wilt quickly in the heat and humidity.

The caterpillar part of the exhibit is an entry way before the main exhibit. A volunteer is there to explain the exhibit and point out the caterpillars on the food plants. Can you find the cecropia moth caterpillar in the image below?

If not – I’ve circled it in this thumbnail.

Right after I entered the butterfly exhibit – a blue morpho settled for a bit on one of the walls. Usually they do not sit for long with their winds open like this so I felt lucky to get the picture right away. This one looked very battered – probably near the end of a relatively short life cycle of about 115 days.

The day was warm enough for all the butterflies to be active and one of them settled on my T-shirt; I got a picture before it flew off.

But it came back and landed on the hat I’d tied to the strap of my bag.

Another butterfly liked the back of my pants.

Enjoy the slide show of my photo picks from the rest of my walk around the conservatory. I’ll be going again every time we have guests from out of town this summer!