One of the places I visit to practice photography and to learn about buttterflies and what plants attract them is Butterfly World in Tradewinds Park, Coconut Creek, Florida Butterfly World Here are two of the Macaws that are always outside on their perch in an area at the end of the suspension bridge.
I took these pictures in January during the South Florida cold spell when nightly temperatures fell below 40 degrees...it was too cold for the butterflies and for some of the birds and plants. The staff brought most of the butterflies, as well as some of the birds and plants indoors, where they were kept warm with portable heaters. Heat lamps were set up at the feeding stations for the birds that stayed outside The plants were kept safe at room temperature in the front Lobby.
The Butterfly World staff caught most of the butterflies by hand and moved them indoors but a few elusive butterflies were on their own...this Cythya Heliconius Melponene (?) was too cold to fly and fell into a shaded, icy stream of water...
A Lady Gouldian Finch keeping warm...
This butterfly was hanging from the ceiling of the heated screen enclosure...I'm not sure what kind of butterfly this is, maybe one of the Longwings...
Another butterfly resting indoors...
I took this picture today, April 1st. I think I should have used a smaller aperture to get a little more depth of field so that his/her beak would be more defined.If you click on the image you can see the larger version...
I have a "Monika Fischer" Passion Vine in my backyard but it's not in bloom right now since we've had a lot of cold weather. The Passion Vine is a Florida native plant and it's a host plant for the Gulf Fritillary, Julia and Zebra Long Wing butterflies.I took this picture because I was practicing using my flash outside...
I didn't do too great getting a good image of this bird ...I was trying using jpeg instead of raw and setting the camera's jpeg setting to sharp plus using my flash attached to my camera with my Wimberly Flash Flipper...
