NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Hundreds of butterflies and moths are flying free in the Virginia Living Museum’s Butterfly Haven.
But a visit there isn’t just about admiring their beauty; it gives us an up-close look at their life cycles.
“It gets very packed in there.”
Darl Fletcher is the Virginia Living Museum’s Horticultural Curator.
“Most of what is in there is native to this area,” said Fletcher.
He’s been helping make sure the pollinators get what they need in their haven.
“They need their host plants; they need their nectar species. They're used to the native plants that we have here in this area. So, they associate them with food. So, it kind of attracts them better.”
From egg, to caterpillar, chrysalis, then beautiful butterfly- visitors can see every single one of those stages right here.
“It's a good place for you to kind of learn the cycle of the butterflies.”
“It's actually a chrysalis chamber,” said Meghan Garrity, showing us a chrysalis. “And inside here we have a bunch of chrysalises. A chrysalis is one of the stages of our butterflies where they turn from a caterpillar to a butterfly.”
And check out how cool this is: sensing that we were close, a Luna Moth chrysalis began to shake to ward us off thinking we were predators!
The Butterfly Haven also supports the museum’s conservation efforts in preserving our pollinator friends.
The Butterfly Haven hosts more than a dozen native species- from a variety of Swallowtails to Buckeyes, and the ever-popular migratory Monarch.
“What we do here, we do a tagging program with them. We've been doing it for like 21 years.”
In 2022, the Monarch was classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The delicate insect can travel nearly 3,000 miles from the U.S. and Canada to its overwintering destination in central Mexico.
“It's kind of like the little sticker they'll put on a piece of fruit is what it resembles. And you can put it on the back wing of a Monarch butterfly, it's done through Monarch Watch, and it has a number on it too. It's a big citizen science program.”
By being tagged, each butterfly’s months-long journey can be monitored and accounted for when they hopefully arrive at their destination.
“If you see a butterfly that's got one of those tags on it, you can get a picture of it with your phone, you can then like zoom in on it and get the number that's on it, you can turn that into the Monarch Watch. And it will end up being listed as to where it was tagged, where it was seen,” said Fletcher. “We try to tag at least 200 a year here each year.”
The tagging happens with the autumnal equinox, and shortly after, all the butterflies in the haven are released and the cycle of life continues.
“As things kind of start winding down, the doors come off, the butterflies get to go out and finish their lives, maybe lay some more eggs, maybe get some crystals on the grounds, which will then emerge in the spring.”
If you’d like to visit this exhibit will be open to the public through the end of September.
