Tropics in Montreal

Today we went to the Botanical Gardens, specifically to the Butterfly room. It is an annual exhibit that starts in February and runs until April that is basically a huge netted room with plants (and a lot of sticky heat) and thousands and thousands of butterflies. They are on the ceiling, on the walls, on the plants, in glass cases (the cocoons, that is) and on people. You are free to walk amongst them as they go about their business. It was my first time and I dithered on which camera lens to take (now that I have a choice!). I'm glad I took my zoom because I got some dandy shots. We didn't have any butterflies land on us, I kept hoping a big blue morpho would land on Riley's head, but they kind of freaked him out a little when they flew close to him. There was one little boy with one stuck on his finger and he was about to get hysterical when one of the workers came and dislodged it. Up close you see what they really are, very large bugs! Here are a couple of shots, it was hard to choose because I took so many. The first is a blue morpho, the second a luna moth, a truly extraordinary "thing", for lack of a better word because it doesn't even really look like a moth or a butterfly or a bug. It looks purely alien.


The underside of a blue morpho, I have to admit it is much more beautiful when the wings are open:

I don't know what this one is called, or even if it's a moth or a butterfly:

I believe this one is a moth, I love the way he is clutching onto the leaf, although it doesn't look very comfortable:



Butterflies or moths?


We also wandered through the insectarium that was attached to the butterfly room and I got a shot of these flower beetles making, well...more flower beetles:


It did my heart and spirit good to see plants and flowers and bask in the warm, humid air of the indoor part of the botanical gardens (the outdoor part is still quite buried) and I couldn't resist popping up one or two shots. It's easy to forget that these colors exist when it's been winter for six months: