Brookside Gardens

It was a lovely, cool day today and as my friend Barbara came up to see us for the day, we decided at the last minute to go to Brookside Gardens and have a look at their Butterfly House. Our plans for the day had originally included Monster Mini Golf (an indoor, glow-in-the-dark mini golf place), which we still did, but as it was so nice out, we also wanted to do something outside, and Barbara in particular is a keen photographer of insects and other mini-beasts, so it seemed like the ideal combination. Hoorah for my friend Christy, who came up with the brilliant idea...  Anyway, here follow lots of photos (but not nearly as many as we took!) of insects, flowers and so on.

Shame about the plastic tag and tie in this photo, but I did want to show the caterpillar, who was just crawling out of his leaf hangout...

Needless to say, there were butterflies (and moths) everywhere. I didn't take photos of all the kinds, or even try. 

But I did like this one in particular, who was hanging out on this plant, trying hard to look like a leaf (and not doing a bad job). 

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This is an Atlas moth, the largest moth in the world in terms of wing surface area and span. It was huge - this one's wings were 8-10 inches across.

These amazing green creatures are African moon moths - not quite as big as the Atlas, but still very cool. Apparently, they are related to the Luna moth. 

They had some samples of dead butterflies and moths that you could touch and look at close up (you were asked not to touch the living ones, though sometimes the butterflies themselves made decisions about that, as you will see...) - this is a monarch on Alex's hand

and this is an Atlas moth. Just huge!

Here's a butterfly, obviously attracted by my red camera. It stayed on my hand for a good 2-3 minutes. Then, luckily, it flew away, as my arms were getting tired.

This one landed on a girl's head - no one we knew - but it stayed there for quite a while, as everyone took photos.

And this one, or one like it, 

decided that my mother's shirt was a good place to be.

After the butterfly house, we went outside to look at the gardens for a while (and take more photos).

There were dragonflies all over, but not alighting as much as we'd like, though I did manage to get a few snaps of them. 

The flowers were slightly more obliging about holding still (though there was a fair bit of wind, so even they weren't perfect!)