The American Museum of Natural History is thick with lepidoptera right now. Running through May, there is a live Butterfly Conservatory.
Some of the butterflies in this steamy tube are enormous.
Chances are very good that a butterfly or two will land on you, so this is a great place to bring the kids (the butterflies, after all, are hungry).
Also on display is Winged Tapestries: Moths at Large, stunning ink jet prints of moths by Jim des Rivières.
(This one, we decided, is really a Norse god.)
Additionally, the current IMAX film is called Flight of the Butterflies and tells the story of the discovery of the long-distance migration of the Monarchs. It’s got one of my least favorite documentary tropes — actors playing real people — but you can’t have everything.
Our local life and science museum has a huge butterfly house and I love it. I dream of visiting the American Museum of Natural History though. There are about a gazillion things there I want to see.
did you mean so that the butterflies would eat [the kids]…?
[in any case,] excellent pictures, sir! Great detail, and–but?– no sign of the utter chaos just out of frame (occupational hazard of people and butterflies free-ranging on the same range)!
Oh, I’m very good at keeping the chaos out of the frame.