White River Gardens Reflecting Pond

Dragonfly Pictures

Here are a few of the dragonfly pictures I took at White River Gardens yesterday!

White River Gardens Butterfly Exhibit

Yesterday, I went with my daughter and some little friends to the zoo and the White River Gardens. My favorite part is always the butterfly exhibit.




I had a wonderful day enjoying the gardens and the magnificent butterflies.

Today's feature is the butterflies. Tomorrow I'll share some pictures of the gardens.
















This year they added some moths to the exhibit; this was the only one I saw.

The chrysalis is attached to a rod and they are kept in this box until the butterflies emerge.

White River Gardens

I enjoyed photographing the water lilies.

White peony.

Bleeding heart

Frog fountain

Train in the garden.

The Wedding garden was beautiful with all of the pink rose bushes in full bloom.

Bougainvillea

Peony

White River Gardens Butterfly Exhibit

I went to White River Gardens today before meeting up with friends at the Indy zoo, (the zoo and the gardens are connected so you get to see both with admission). It was so nice to take my time at the garden, I had never been before and was glad no one was with me to rush me along. I especially enjoyed the butterfly exhibit. It was a bit difficult to get pictures because there were so many school children there.
I am trying to identify the butterflies from my National Audubon Society Field Guide. I believe the orange butterfly is a Julia Fritillary and the other one I think is a buckeye.

These may be northern eyed browns.

Fritillary

The black and white striped one is a zebra long wing. This is an interesting fact about the zebra butterfly; the female pupae releases an odor to attract the male. The males mate with the fully developed females while they are still in their pupal cases. During the mating the male releases a chemical which acts as a chastity belt to repel other males.

The butterflies love the lantana.

This looks like a swallowtail to me, since it has the spots along the wings, but since the tail is missing I'm not certain, however I don't see a blue swallowtail in the book.

I wish I could have gotten a better picture of this because it is very interesting. They get a shipment of chrysalises in every two weeks and they glue them to the poles in this box according to species. This is where they emerge and dry their wings before being set free in the observatory. We were told that the butterflies have a very short life span of about two weeks.