We had a weekend recently in which we visited several museums on the Mall, one of them being the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where I found not only an absolutely fantastic nature photography exhibit (to be posted later), but also a butterfly pavilion. We paid and waited to go into the pavilion, something I’ve never done in my left as I’m generally afraid of insects, but after seeing all the beautiful butterfly pictures from friends on Pbase, I just had to get up the courage to face them ;-). They for the most part turned out to be difficult to photograph, and in the case of a spectacular blue one (blue morpho) literally impossible, but I totally enjoyed the experience and was even disappointed that none had clung to my clothes as we were being inspected before exiting. In any case I got a couple of hopefully usable pictures.

I was fascinated by this gathering, which at one point had five butterflies. Not sure exactly how many are there in this picture, but could be more than it appears.

The Butterfly Pavilion (2), posted earlier: