On this Wednesday, our day off, we decided to go look for Spring in the tropical house called Papiliorama which is in Kerzers near Bern. It was a great outing for this awful rainy day, although it was almost too warm and humid in the little jungle they have there!
I love the Papiliorama, this is my second time there. It is a large greenhouse with huge tropical trees and ponds and thousands of butterflies of all sizes and colours that flit around like pieces of paper. Some of the butterflies have about a 20-cm wingspan!
In another part of the building is a replica of a tropical forest in Belize with exotic birds and fish, and there is also a nocturnal house where bats fly free while you walk in semi-dark and observe the two-toed sloths and raccoons.
But the Butterfly House is my favourite. The chrysalises are imported from Malaysia and Belize and hung in a hatching cabinet for visitors to view and watch the butterflies hatch. A couple of times a day they are released, and that is when you can observe them best as they rest for a few hours on a tree trunk before trying out their new wings.
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| The tropical garden in the butterfly house at the Papiliorama |
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| Exotic butterflies drying their wings before flying off into the "jungle" |
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| Tropical Asien Butterfly called the "Great Mormon" |
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| The Atlas Moth is amongst one of the largest moths in the world. Females can reach a wingspan of 25 cm. |
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| Tropical Asian butterfly called "Emerald Swallowtail" |
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| South American Butterfly: "Purple Mort" (Bambusfalter) |
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| Asian Tropical Butterfly: "White Tree Nymph" |
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| My personal favourite: "Blue Morpho", a tropical American butterfly. There were many of these flitting all over the place. |
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| These Blue Morphos were hard to photograph because when they finally landed, they would close their wings and show onl the underside, which is brown with beautiful large spots. |
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| This is the Blue Morphos when it has its wings closed |
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| A variety of other butterflies that I was able to photograph |
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| Hanging out near the roof of the "Greenhouse" |
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| This is a type of pigeon that obviously does not eat butterflies, because it was also flying in the butterfly house |
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| In the Belize Jungle House, there were some exotic birds such as this Roseate Spoonbill |
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| This one we barely saw, it was in a tree hollow above eye level. Urs is taller so he saw its head. With the camera up high I was able to photograph this Great Currasow, the largest bird species in the Shipstern Nature Reserve in Belize |
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| I don't know what this one was called |
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| There were also Toucans, but I could not capture their beautiful colours on camera. |
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