Those blue ones are teases.

Today I went with a photography group to the "Wings of Fancy" exhibit at the Brookside Gardens. I was amazed at how easy it was to get some pretty decent photos. The Blue Morphos posed a challenge for all of us -- we wanted to get a picture of them sitting still, instead of fluttering around. One of the docents pointed out to me that when they are sitting still, they look completely different because they hold their wings closed and the undersides of their wings are brown. They also prefer, unlike many of the other lepidopterans present, to get their nutrients from over-ripe fruit. See the tinge of blue on one of the bugs pictured below? A few more favorites...

(Above)Notice the contrast between red and blue on this little guy.

So velvety soft -- soft-looking, of course. We were told that if one lands on us, we were to summon an attendant to brush them off of us.

Ooooh, one more treat! Watching a monarch butterfly go from chrysalis to ready-to-fly. They can fly after about 10 minutes, I was told, although it takes about 2 hours for their wings to completely dry.