Saturday, February 13, 2010

Winter Remedy

When your afternoon looks like this AGAIN,

here's a perfect remedy--your local butterfly house or botanical gardens.

The Sertoma Butterfly House offers a warm, humid climate and tropical plants to support a variety of kinds of butterflies and give visitors a respite from a brutal winter.

Butterflies hide among hibiscus.

Butterflies feed on fruit and gatorade.



Nature has camouflaged some of these flutterers in amazing ways. Here is the Dead Leaf butterly:

Until it moves, it looks like its name.

This butterfly's closed wings have "eyes" to fake out predators who think it may be a bird or something more threatening:

The morpho butterflies have electric blue wings that show only when their wings are open. That and their tendency toward constant motion present challenges to photographers, but one young fellow was able to attract one, despite warnings not to touch the butterflies:

For more information about butterflies, click here.

We enjoyed our tropical mini-vacation! What getaways have you taken to get a break from winter?

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing the beautiful photos! We spent the past two weeks in blustery, snowy, cold NW Ohio (and had cabin fever four straight days)--it's good to be home again. Jane, you've motivated me to schedule a field trip to our nearby butterfly house. Till now our getaways have been to the library and to the rec center (and way too many eateries).

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  2. Thanks for this great post! Love the pictures and the information. Almost like coming along with you. We're going to have to go down and visit our butterfly house! So nice and warm. We are all so sick of winter.

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  3. You are welcome and thank you. Wish you could have gone with us!

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