A Visit To UF's Butterfly Rainforest

Yesterday, beautiful daughter Emma and I toured the Megalodon exhibit at the University of Florida's Natural History Museum. The Meg exhibit was okay, if you didn't know a lot about sharks to start with, it would probably be waaaaay coooool, but fish are kinda' my thing.

However, the Butterfly Rainforest (it was raining, how do they do that?) was extremely waaaaay coooooool, even if the butterflies are mostly tourists from other more tropical climes.

They had some non-butterfly chomping birds in the enclosure like this finch. The neatest birds were tiny button quail that would appear from time to time from the lush foliage.

I need to find out more about them.

I don't know the names of any of these butterflies, because I don't need the brain clutter of a bunch of exotic, foreign butterfly names.

I just enjoyed their beauty while Emma identified them using the cool ID butterfly and plant guides the museum provides.

In one ear and out the other.

This is the amazing blue butterfly you will see later in this post. He's just got his wings folded while he slurps banana essence.

This one was resting while a fluttery battle raged just above his head.
There he is with wings open.
These two were kinoodling in the bamboo grove.

Every so often, you'd come across a feeder with ripe fruit on it. The museum bug nerd guides said these were needed since some butterflies did not feed on plant nectar.

The entire enclosure is densely planted with an amazing variety of plants and there is a waterfall and stream.

Butterflies are everywhere. I mean EVERYwhere. The air is full of them and every plant seems to have a few resting or feeding.

Outside of the enclosure, the walls were festooned with displays of pinned butterflys. I'm not crazy about that, but I know it has it's place for research. This is a working research museum with all kinds of insect work going on.

They have a huge window that lets you see into the nursery where a multitude of caterpillars munch happily on various potted plants. While we were in the enclosure, a museum guy brought out some new butterflies to add to the mix and chatted with the crowd.

The cost was about $8.50 for adults. About like a trip to the movies if you skip the giant tub of popcorn and two gallon cokes ... which I never do, so this was cheaper.

Happy Independence Day!