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Monday, June 18, 2012

Butterflies at Brookside Gardens

A week ago, as part of her preschool program, Julia had a chance to see the butterfly exhibit at Brookside Gardens.  Julia has day camp in the morning this week, which gives Evelyn and me time to do things together.  Seeing the butterflies at Brookside Gardens was at the top of our list.  The butterfly atrium can get uncomfortably warm when it's sunny.  Today's forecast was cloudy, rainy and maybe 70 degrees.  That's the perfect weather to visit the butterflies, so we headed right over to Rockville this morning.

I took a bazillion pictures of butterflies this morning.  In the picture below, there's a zebra longwing in the foreground and a monarch in the background.
 I captured three butterflies in this picture!  There's a queen in the back, a Sara's longwing on the right, and a pipevine swallowtail on the bottom left.
 Here's my favorite - a blue morpho.  These guys are HUGE.  Its wingspan is about five inches across.  When these guys are flying around the atrium, you really notice them.
 I love how the banded orange butterflies stand out from the flowers and foliage.
 This is a tricky one for you.  There's a clearwing in the foreground, hanging out on a zinnia bud.  Its camouflage is that it has clear wings - that makes it easy to blend with any kind of background.  (There's also a blue and white longwing in the background, on the right.)
 Since the temperature was quite comfortable in the butterfly atrium this morning, Evelyn and I sat on a bench for about half an hour, just watching the butterflies zip around.  This is also when she and I had a couple of blue morphos land on us.  In all, five blue morphos landed on Evelyn.  Here's my favorite picture of her - when one landed on her head.
 Evelyn told me she wore yellow today to attract the butterflies.  Looks like her plan worked!

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