Butterflies go free….

On Wednesday we met up with Simon’s father, his father’s girlfriend and his sister and went to the Montreal botanical gardens to see the butterflies roaming free..

It was absolutely beautiful.

I have tons of pictures from the day so if you want to see, continue to the full post…

The kids were excited to go… even Wilhelmina was excited when we said we were going to see butterflies..

The butterflies are in the Montreal Botanical Garden greenhouses. First you go through the more tropical part of the greenhouse filled with beautiful flowers and plants and trees including citrus trees, cinnamon bushes. vanilla, cardamom, nutmeg, coffee, sugar cane and many other spices and foods that we use everyday…

When you get to the end, you are in the first butterfly exhibit which represents the night butterflies and Moths.

This is a Cobra Moth. It is one of the largest moths on earth with a wingspan between 15-25cm. It is called a Cobra Moth because the outside of its wings resemble two cobra heads… Can you see them? This moth is not something I would feel comfortable being with while sleeping… it is huge!

This is the Owl Butterfly. You can see why, I couldn’t get a picture with its wings open but you can imagine the two large owl eyes peering at you…

There was a feeder in which we were able to see how they eat. Xavier was fascinated by them and watched for quite a while. Though they are definitely not as large as the Cobra Moth, they are not small either as you can see with the size of the banana.

I haven’t yet found the name of the brown moth… but I loved watching it eat with its bright red proboscis. The Cocoon is that of the Cobra moth, it’s size is almost as impressive as the moth itself.

Here are the boys under the waterfall at the end of the night butterflies exhibit… It was time to head to the Butterflies of light.

You make your way back through the greenhouses seeing more tropical plants and flowers and then head through to a drier climate and all of the cacti and bonzi trees…

Though the butterflies of the night were beautiful, the butterflies of light were spectacular. The whole room was a flutter with butterflies of all colour and in particular the Blue Morpho.

When the wings of the Blue Morpho are closed it doesn’t look all that special…

but when they are open… It is the most amazing shade of blue.

They were literally everywhere… and it was magical…

There is also the White Morpho

and the Rice Paper Butterfly… (which is also the first butterfly of the post)

and here is the Julia…

and of course the Monarch

and the Tanzanian Diadem

the Pink Rose (yes, it is completely black)

the Small Troides

and the Great Morman

In all… more than 2000 butterflies and dozens of species roam the two butterfly room of the botanical Gardens.

Afterwards we headed to the Insectarium to see some insects. Usually there are great ant and bee exhibits but both were temporarily closed. So we saw many stick bugs and beetles and spiders and other crawly creatures.

In the botanical gardens Xavier started to get interested in all of the signs everywhere, so him and I trained behind often reading the details about what we were seeing. He was very intrigued by all of the insects that we saw…

All of the colours…

Can you see him?

Stick insect

Simon and the kids looking at some beetles…

It was an amazing day and something that the kids will not soon forget..