31 March 2025
While we slept, the storms cleared out and while it was a cold, overcast morning (only in the low 30s!), it was dry, plus we’ll be indoors today.
Welcome to Meijer Gardens!
(they do have a bunch of sculptures too, but most of them are outdoors and that just didn’t sound fun to us today)
To get to the butterflies, you have to go through part of the gardens- “have to” like that’s a bad thing! I mean, look at the color on these flowers!
and these cute armadillos!
Little cacti:
Matt <3s barrel cactus!
They also had a room of carnivorous plants, like this pitcher plant:
and this mat of Venus flytraps:
Did you know they grew as a mass like this!? I had no idea, I’ve only ever seen them in plant stores- singular guys in individual pots.
The “leaves” have cool little filaments on them though.
Time to head into the butterfly greenhouse!
The downside of coming during the week is that this is a popular trip for school groups so we’ve got about an hour to explore before small children come pouring in- good luck us!
We picked up this little book at the entrance:
click image to open (courtesy of Meijer Gardens)
I’m really bad at remembering which butterflies I’ve seen and end up taking a million pictures of the same ones over and over, so Matt’ll try to find them in the book and mark them off as we find them!
The problem is, the book only shows them open, and a lot of butterflies look WAY different when closed up. Plus, several of them had the same name:
from the Meijer Gardens butterfly guide
so good luck, us!
Normally, when we visit butterflies, there are dozens of these orange Julias:
But we saw maybe two (I’m still not convinced it wasn’t the same guy twice) and it took almost til the end of the day to find it:
They had a display case filled with chrysalises in various stages of hatchedness (including a fresh Julia), and I thought I took a picture of the whole thing to help with identifying butterflies later, but apparently I didn’t. Shoot.
One of the easy-to-identify guys that we usually only see 1 or 2 of is the Blue morpho, and they were EVERYWHERE here!
I love how they change color depending on how the light is hitting them:
These guys rarely stay open for long, usually they flit around, land, and immediately close back up:
But every now and then, one would land and stay open:
I love how you can see the “eyes” of the outer shining through.
Several cattlehearts:
Great mormon:
This guy didn’t want to settle down 🙁
Red rim:
who looks really similar to this Crimson banded guy:
Grecian shoemaker:
Silver king shoemaker- a lady noticed me taking pictures and showed me her picture of this guy, asking if I’d seen him yet- I hadn’t so she told me where to find him:
Thankfully, he was still on his tree and after waiting patiently for a few minutes, he opened up! Look at those awesome blue bands!!!
I found another one freshly emerged in the chrysalis cage:
Other things in the cage- this Atlas moth that emerged over the weekend!
shooting through the glass proved to be difficult, so I don’t actually have a great shot of him, which is unfortunate because he’s a truly stunning moth!
Citrus swallowtail:
A few times throughout the day, butterfly staff collect any butterflies that are hatched and dry and release them into the greenhouse.
One of their release sites is a glass box on a pedestal, where this Variable cracker was chilling:
Another still-in-the-cage guy, this Leopard lacewing:
A Zebra mosaic in the cage:
On the release box:
and at the feeder:
I like the bold stripe on the inside of his wings!
A couple Tree nymphs:
these guys look like washed-out monarchs to me
How cool are these gold chrysalises!?
They belong to the Spotted tiger glassywing, but unfortunately I couldn’t find any in butterfly form 🙁
Banded orange tiger:
Unfortunately, things get a bit tricky from here- a lot of the longwings look the same, but are actually different, and all the postmen are called postmen, even though they look different. The internet is only somewhat helpful in distinguishing them, so I’ll do my best.
Starting with the postmen, this is a standard Postman:
Black wings, red bar on the top, white bar on the bottom. Problem is, this is also a postman:
Black wings, red bar on top, white skirt on bottom.
Here’s a better shot of his outer wing, where he does have a white stripe, but of varying thickness:
same subspecies, just slightly different presentations
This guy, despite having only 2 upper wing splotches and no lower wing markings? Also a postman:
and that orange stripey guy flitting around? You guessed it- a postman!
Same but with yellow-tipped antenna:
and, even though this guy’s white patches are much closer to his orange parts, I think he’s the same as the other stripey guys:
Unless he’s a mimic, because mimicry among butterflies is super common and I don’t know enough about them to differentiate that.
Jumping over to longwings, this guy goes by several names, including Tiger longwing, Golden heliconian (because his genus is heliconius) or Hecale longwing (as he is of the hecale species). Not at all confusing!
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a picture of him opened up 🙁
Here’s another longwing with many variations- the numata:
I think this may be his inside?
but I’ve also got this guy…
who is probably the open version of one of the orange/black/white guys as well, but I don’t really know exactly which one 🙁
A variation on the numata:
I think this may be the inner look:
and yet another variation:
I do like this guy’s black-and-orange look
Moving on, this is a Sara longwing:
I’m glad there was an open and closed one at this feeding station- makes identifying them much easier!
I love the blue of their inner wings!
A similar longwing that has only one outer white stripe is the Doris longwing:
No inner pictures, unfortunately, but I did find this cool Blue and white longwing:
He also has a singular, though larger, white splotch on his outer, but inside…
Look at that blue!!!
I like how you can just see his blue peeking through when he’s folded up:
Then there’s this guy:
he’s also blue on the inside, but with a white skirt. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of him closed up, so I’m not really sure who he is… maybe this guy?
They both have white skirts…
but without consecutive shots of him open and closed, I really can’t be certain… kinda like this guy who looks similar to the other closed up guys, but has no white skirt and a much larger white patch…
Ugh, butterflies are confusing!
I think this is a Hewitsoni longwing:
Here’s one I know for certain- the Zebra longwing!
and this similar, but not-quite-the-same, False zebra longwing:
he’s more dotted than dashed:
plus, his outer wings have a bit more color:
Having Matt along to track which butterflies I photographed was super-helpful, but next time (because let’s face it- as much as I hate trying to name them after, we do enjoy hunting butterflies!) I need to work on getting a picture of both sides on the same butterfly so I can identify them better.
Oh, and there were also a few birds hanging around, so here’s a little guy enjoying a snack:
There were also some quail, but they were fast! so my pictures are all blurry.
The butterfly house was getting busy and we weren’t really finding any new guys, so we left a little after lunch. Unfortunately it was still pretty cold (maybe 40? but overcast and windy) so the hike we had planned didn’t sound like fun… so we went back to our hotel where Matt got some work done and I took a nap (don’t judge- I’m on vacation!).
I woke up just in time for dinner 🙂 I was still craving my giant pretzel so we went back to the Old Goat:
I made it through about half of one…
Matt, on the other hand, got this tasty Beef Biscuit Bourguignon and ate the whole thing!
(minus the celery because seriously, ew)