Hello, everyone! As you might have already guessed, today’s post is going to be full of butterflies. There will be plenty of amazing colors to inspire your next papercrafting project!
We recently went to Butterfly World in Coconut Creek, Florida – the largest butterfly house in the world with 3 acres of butterfly and bird aviaries, botanical gardens and a working butterfly farm and research center.
It was a cool day and we arrived first thing in the morning, so most of the 20,000+ butterflies (up to 50 species) were still lazing about posing for picture after picture rather than rushing about all a flutter to fill their tummies with nectar.
How many snoozing butterflies can you find?!
Choosing pics for this post was tough! Take these lovely Tree Nymphs (aka Paper Kites (Idea leuconoe))…
How can you choose just one pose?!!
The gorgeous green Malachites (Siproeta stelenes) were also showing off for the camera:
There’s also a huge difference depending on which way the light hits their wings!
This Julia Heliconian (Dryas iulia) is another case in point.
As the sun warms things up, everyone flutters about their business. You can see some of those amazing blue Morphos flitting by in this video…
Here’s one I caught recharging her batteries – love that gorgeous iridescent blue!
The under side of the wings have large eye spots that startle predators. Their wingspans measure 5-8 inches.
This one has a piece of his wing missing so the iridescent blue of the opposite wing shines through. I love the water droplets beading up from the fine mist sprinkers nearby!
The Owl (Caligo) butterflies have huge eye spots. The outer wings are a duller blue than the Morphos. With a wingspan of up to nearly 8 inches, the species is the largest butterfly in the Americas.
A Rusty Tipped Page (Siproeta epaphus) and a Tiger Longwing (Heliconius hecale).
There are oodles of variations of Piano Keys (Heliconius melpomene):
Check out the amazing female Cairns Birdwing (Ornithoptera euphorion) butterfly with a wingspan of about 6 inches:
As is often the case in nature, she is greatly surpassed by gorgeous colors of the male Cairns Birdwing:
I MUST do a card in those amazing colors some day!!
Let’s close with a trip to the nursery and check out the newly emerged butterflies still clinging to their chrysalises…
It’s interesting to see the chrysalises with the Malachites still inside are green, but once they’re out, they’re white.
I hope you’v enjoyed seeing these flowers with wings! I’ll be back soon with part 2 – birds and flowers. Thanks for taking the time to enjoy these wonders of creation with me!
~D.Ann
.
p.s. any ads on this page are placed by WordPress and are not endorsed by me.
D.Ann's Crafting Whims 