Sunday, January 8, 2012

Callaway Gardens - Butterfly House

While in Georgia for the Christmas holiday, we had the fortune of visiting Callaway Gardens.  After seeing some of Callaway Gardens' amazing birds of prey, we had just enough time to see a few butterflies before getting supper and driving through their spectacular Fantasy in Lights show. 

The Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center is large, glass-enclosed, conservatory filled with tropical flowers and even a small waterfall.  Hundreds of tropical butterflies representing 50 species fly freely around the conservatory.

tropical flowers inside the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center
I do not know a lot about tropical butterflies and am therefore am not good at identifying them.  Thus I was quite stunned when, at the sight of the very first butterfly we came upon, my four-year-old calmly stated, "Oh look!  There's a Blue Morpho butterfly."

Blue Morpho butterfly at a banana cage at Callaway Gardens
Well, at least she's learning something useful from those TV shows!
Go, Diego!  

Later on, we saw a Blue Morpho with the beautiful wings opened.

Blue Mopho butterfly at Callaway Gardens
There were also many butterflies from the Heliconiinae family, which are often called longwings.

Tiger Longwing butterfly at Callaway Gardens
Some of the most stunning butterflies from this category are the Cethosiea, or lacewing, butterflies.

Lacewing butterfly at Callaway Gardens
Once up close, one can easily see why they are called 'lacewings'.

Lacewing butterfly at Callaway Gardens

Several of the butterflies looked like it had been a long day and they were ready to leave...

Clipper butterfly at Callaway Gardens
While other, most likely younger butterflies nectared on the plentiful flowers, and many more flitted about the conservatory.

I think this is a Great Eggfly butterfly, nectaring on pentas.
Besides the butterflies, the tropical conservatory itself was a treat, full of beautiful and even unusual look flowers.

I think I need some pink crocosmia for my garden now...
Outside of the butterfly room are all the chrysalises of the different butterflies behind glass with what looked to be a tunnel for newly emerged butterflies to fly into the butterfly conservatory.  Pupa are shipped to the butterfly center from Malaysia, the Philippines, and Central and South America.

Butterfly chrysalises at Callaway Gardens
I had such a great time at Callaway Gardens seeing the Birds of Prey show and visiting the Butterfly Center; however, my kids' favorite part of the day was the holiday light show.  Five miles of music combined with millions of Christmas lights - well, I guess it's hard to compete with that!

linking with the Little Red House blog for Mosaic Monday

11 comments:

  1. I want to visit the butterfly garden when it comes to the Fred meijier gardens near us.. They are beautiful to watch

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love the butterflies. we don't have anything near here like that (that I know of) so I've always tried butterfly attracting flowers. We get a few, but none as beautiful as your pics. sounds like a great time. I guess I'll keep letting our 1 year old watch wonderpets! What's gonna work? Teamwork!

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a treat for the senses in the middle of winter!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh wow, the butterflies are beautiful. And the flowers looks gorgeous. What a neat place to visit. Thanks for sharing, lovely mosaic. Have a great week!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Super captures of the butterflies! They use to have a sheet for kids to help id them with photo and name. Last time I was there I couldn't find them. It certainly was helpful since I am not that familiar with tropical butterflies either.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dear Indie, What an amazing place to visit! The butterflies are beautiful. I chuckled when your daughter identified the blue one. P. x

    ReplyDelete
  7. I've only been to one butterfly house, but it was so impressive. I immediately wanted one! LOL That line up of chrysalises is amazing!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I also enjoyed the butterfly house at Calloway Gardens. I just needed a four year old to help me identify them!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thank you! I love butterfly houses and enjoyed going to this one. I wish we could have stayed longer before it closed for the evening. It was really so funny that my four year old was the only one who could identify any butterflies! I guess we'll keep letting the kids watch TV ;)

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comment!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...