The Butterfly House

The photographs in this post were made at the Butterfly House in the Living Desert in April of 2009. The Living Desert is a zoo in Palm Desert, California. For zoo information, see http://www.livingdesert.org. The information on the web site is fairly thorough.

I recommend visiting this zoo in the Fall, Winter, or Spring. The desert temperatures are usually in the triple digits (Farenheit) during the summer, and the animals are generally not very active in the heat.

Butterflies will land on visitors, but they should not be touched with the fingers, which harms them. They are unable to fly after being touched with fingers or “petted”.

There are many species of butterflies in the house, a few of which are shown here.

Hummingbirds are also in residence at the Butterfly House. A nesting hummingbird is shown below.

This lizard seemed perfectly at home in a tree outside the Butterfly House. Because I live in the southwest, I often see lizards, but unlike the iguanas in Mexico, I’ve never before noticed them in trees.