Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Butterflies Everywhere

This is a picture heavy post because I'm out of town visiting my mom so I don't have a lot of blogging time this week. Last weekend my husband and I visited the Fourth Annual Butterfly Bash at the Durham Museum of Life and Science.

One of the museum's exhibits is the Magic Wings Butterfly House. It is a beautiful conservatory that is kept at 80 degrees F year round. It is filled with tropical plants and hundreds of beautiful butterflies from different locations around the world.

The butterflies just fly around everywhere and if you are lucky, they will land right in your hand. It is really quite a beautiful thing to see. On Saturday and Sunday they release new butterflies into the conservatory. We didn't see that this time.

There are benches to sit on in and little feeding stations set up through the exhibit. So there are plenty of opportunities to get close to the butterflies.

The tricky part was as soon as we went inside, the humidity cause my camera lens to fog over. I'll have to prepare myself for that better next time. I wasn't really pleased with the photos I got. This time it was an issue of skill of the photographer because plenty of opportunity existed. I'm definitely going to have to try this again.

The museum had some interesting exhibits inside as well as a nice playground area for kids. They had some black bears, red wolves, and lemurs in an outside exhibit too. There is a wetland exhibit and they are putting in some radio controlled sailboats this spring. My husband wants to go back and try those.

They also have a small area with farm animals. They had a Belted Galloway cow, who doesn't like a striped cow? They had some pygmy goats and of course some sheep. I had to take pictures of the sheep. It was the closest thing we saw to yarn all day long.

It was a nice day, but next time I'll visit on a day without all the hoopla going on around the butterflies. If you go to visit, I'd suggest going early in the morning before a large group gets there. I hope to be able to go again and try for some better pictures of the butterflies.

We are planning a day trip sometime this summer to the local zoo. I thought it would be fun to try and get some pictures of all the animals. But it did take a little work to convince my husband to go along. He just really doesn't like to see animals taken from their natural habitats and caged in somewhere. but I'm optimistic it will be a fun trip.

One of my goals this year is to visit more local attractions, like museums, you know - soak up the local culture. Hopefully I'll find some good things to share here along with my knitting.

15 comments:

Zonda said...

Beautiful photos!! Have a great time!!

Sue J. said...

Not happy with your photos? They're stunning! There are pricey galleries in Cody that would sell your work for hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. My parents owned a portrait studio for 50 years, and I remember my Dad cursing the humidity in the summer when he needed to work outside. His lens kept fogging up, too. Have a terrific time.

Bezzie said...

Darnit, for a second I thought the butterflies had returned to (what do you and your husband call your house again???). But those are stunning pics regardless. Did they make you brush off before you left the exhibit (so you don't accidentally bring any butterflies outside w/you?) They had a butterfly house at the San Antonio Zoo but they always charged you extra to go in so we never went--now I'm wishing I had after seeing your pics!!!

Anonymous said...

What would you do to be prepared for the fogging up? Does this involve just having a dry piece of cloth to wipe it off, or is there something else you could do?

Beautiful shots!

Monika said...

I'm sure you will. Your pictures are fantastic! I love the last sheep picture, it's a yarn ball with a heas sticking out, no it's a sheep! ;o)

eusebius said...

Beautiful pictures. I love it when you do a photo post :) We have a butterfly conservatory near us, too, and they really are just amazing.

Anonymous said...

I think the pics are great :) I've heard about the butterfly house, but never been there, now I'm itching to go check it out!!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for sharing your beautiful photos.

Desiree said...

I love the pics! And it must have been so pretty there!

Meghann said...

Beautiful photographs! We took my daughter to a butterfly conservatory last year and she loved it! We went on the perfect day too, we were the only people there at the time.

Anonymous said...

The pictures you took were spectacular. The colors of the butterflies & greenery were so lush. Love seeing the last pic of the sheep 'talking'. You should make some notecards with that photo.

cpurl17 said...

Hey, what's that sheep trying to say? I love that photo!

Mary, Mary... said...

I love playing 'tourist' in my home town! As for fog, you could either warm up your camera or try defogging drops like scuba divers use--just a thought.;)

Jessica said...

That is so much fun. Back home in FL we have a place called Butterfly World that's just like that. They have hummingbirds there as well! That first sheep looks pretty rad. Glad you had fun!

Alisha said...

I love the photos!! Thanks for sharing....