Butterfly Bounty

Vicky’s lovely friends Frankie and David wrangled us freebie tickets to the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory. We showed up there on Wednesday, bright and early, before the arrival of the wild tourist hordes.

Although fidgety by nature, when you’re surrounded by 1,500 of those dazzling beauties, some of them will actually hold still for long enough to get a good shot. As you can imagine, I went into a clicking frenzy until the red light on my camera alerted me to the battery’s defeat.

The same kind as above, from the side

And from the front 🙂 These blue ones are very friendly, they seem to love sitting on people

All that posing and fluttering about gives them a mighty appetite:

Congregating on a (sangria-soaked?) sponge feeder

…and on a saucy banana

Butterflies aren’t the only inhabitants of the conservatory; there’s a whole flock of brightly-coloured birds keeping them company.

Including Rhett and Scarlett, who bicker loudly, and then make up, even more vociferously. When they don’t have their heads under water, that is.

A tiny, newly-hatched baby quail…aaaawwwwww!