butterflies & a seaside town - england day 9

the i felt worse when i woke up this morning than i did yesterday, so i stayed in bed reading and writing postcards for a while. then, despite my too-high-temperature, i decided to go to the isle of wight butterfly world anyway.

i spent some very pleasant - and very hot - hours in the company of butterflies from all over the world: the tailed jay, the blue glassy tiger, the malachite, the common mormon, the tree nymph, various swallowtails, various longwings, the giant orange-tip, the blue morpho, and others.

some of them would sit still for a long time, while others are the fluttery creatures we all know ... the giant blue morpho, which is the size of a small bird and reminds me of something out of some animated film, has bright, iridiscent blue wings. they do sit still - but then they immediately fold up. and on the underside the giant blue morpho is nowhere near as bright. it's brown, with what looks like differently sized eyes. so it's extremely hard to get a picture of it ... i think i managed two slightly blurry ones, that's all. one actually sat ON me for a few heartbeats though!

some were frightfully hard to see - i am sure there were at least twice as many butterflies as i saw. one - not sure which species - seemed to have overdosed on banana: its wing got stuck to the banana slice, and it could not get away anymore. a staff member had to pick it up and put it on a leaf.

there were also rows of chrysalises - bright yellow, bright green, blackish, brownish like leaves ... some of them looked like jewellery! i was hoping to see a butterfly hatch, but no such luck. a green one twitched a couple of times, but i was told they do that occasionally. apparently they even react to being tickled!

of course i took lots of photos, here are the only four i have edited so far:


orange meets pink



pale



close-up



black & yellow


i stopped in ryde on the way back, walked around for a while, sat by the beach as it was quite pleasantly warm and sunny, and then went in search of food - which i found in the shape of a pizza at michelangelo's restaurant, just across from the pier. and now, at 10:30, it's time for bed.


song of the day: broken butterflies by lucinda williams.