Monteverde Butterfly Gardens

Cool sights, finds and facts from the interns of the Monteverde Butterfly Gardens

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'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house... (Found this little guy outside today! I accidentally busted down his door with a shovel. We had a little photo shoot before he returned home.)

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We tried to sum up the feeling of each of our 4 gardens by placing flowers and butterflies in our hair.  Matt is in our large open netted garden where local species soar among Monteverde flowers Megan shows off some of our colourful longwing butterflies in our sunny mid elevation habitat where butterflies live above the tree canopy, while Christina is in the mid elevation understory with the glass and stained glass wings drinking from purple Santa Lucia flowers.  Katherine attracts two malachites in our beach level habitat.

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Our pollinator garden is bright, sunny and very busy today! You too can have local birds, butterflies, moths, bees and cool insects in your garden! Head to your local gardening store and look for local pollinator friendly plants. The staff will probably have some good ideas for you. In North America? Plant milkweed! The monarchs will love you for it, and you will benefit by seeing gorgeous caterpillars, chrysalis and butterflies in your garden. Goldenrod is another great one. 

Here in Costa Rica we keep our garden full of lantana, milkweed, pentas, porterweed, and yellow cosmos.

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Matt, one of our hardworking interns, captured one of the beautiful Monteverde sunsets. Watching the sun set over the Gulfo de Nicoya is one of the best ways to spend an evening here at the gardens.

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Between tours we keep busy working in the gardens and learning more about the wildlife of Costa Rica! INBio has been a great source of information for us in the form of informational identification books!

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Our t-shirts from last year vs this year modeled by our lovely interns. We've still got the classic "Have you been bitten by the machaca" shirt, but a little more modern, worn by Matt on the left. We've added "Save a bug, mount an entomologist" and the kid friendly "The lesser of two weevils". 

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We put out a trail cam to try to catch a fruit stealing animal in the act last night. The camera came back with 3 photos of this common opossum on it this morning. That's where all of the butterfly fruit has been going! Tonight we may try to capture other nocturnal animals on the property.

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Check our the baby scorpions on the back of one of our females! We estimate that about 20 made it onto mom's back. She is eating one of them which did not fully develop.

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Days off sometimes consist of hiking and birding the local reserves with our Eagle Optics binoculars! Yesterday's new adventure was the Santa Elena Reserve. It was very beautiful, although engulfed in a giant cloud and very wet! On a clear day you can see all the way to the Arenal Volcano.

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Today we had fun with dragonflies. No ID yet, but we're working on it!

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Christmas tree decorations at the butterfly gardens. Our Christmas tree is truly an entomological dream!

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Thanksgiving Jokes

We hosted Thanksgiving dinner at the butterfly gardens. Our friends 6 year old daughter decided to make up some jokes. These are a few of the gems she came up with:

"Why was the butterfly reading a book?" "because the girl wanted to catch the butterfly in a net!"

"Why did the chicken climb the tree?" Because the tree wanted to marry the chicken"

"Why was the hula girl hulaing in the water?" "Because there was a coconut tree with too many coconuts and they were falling!"

"Why did the chicken cross the road?" "To get to the other side and eat the other chicken. And there was a dog and they ate the chicken together. And then the dog was a bird"

"Why did the yellow m&m pass the m&m bag?" "Because the m&m didn't want to get eaten!"

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It's always an exciting day when we do kids programs! This week we ran a bilingual program on metamorphosis for a local grade 1 class. Here Omar and Christina are telling the story of Maria the butterfly and Timmy the cockroach going through complete and incomplete metamorphosis.They then searched the gardens for the different life stages and did a fun coloring activity. 

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Tuesday night is pizza night at the butterfly gardens. David and Bryna normally whip up some amazing pizzas, but as they were busy this weeks selection was volunteer made! Not quite professional looking, but they sure tasted good! 

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Preparing for a bilingual kids program tomorrow comparing complete metamorphosis to incomplete metamorphosis. By having three 20 minute components (a story with props, a colouring activity, and a hands on search through the gardens) we will appeal to a broad learning style!

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You may wonder what the butterfly garden interns do in our time off. Well, when we get days off you may find us at coffee shops updating our tumblr and reading about metamophosis between hikes in the cloud forest, visits to beautiful fig trees, rappelling over waterfalls, exploring the town of Santa Elena, or just sitting quietly near a river enjoying the natural beauty of the Monteverde area.  This beautiful fig tree is close enough to the gardens that on days that we finish early enough we can hike to it and enjoy a quick scramble up the bank to sit on the top of it!

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We enjoy the occasional night hike through the gardens. Last night we found a beautiful leaf mimicking katydid, a dink frog, some stick insects and a few other neat bugs! Night hikes are a great way to see all kinds of cool creatures. From frogs to tarantulas and even the occasional sleeping bird or nocturnal mammal the night has a lot to offer if you know where to look.