Category: David

For me, the start of the show at the Butterfly Farm weren’t the insects but the reptiles.

One was a rhino snake from South America: long, thin elegant and vividly green. It was in a vivarium, in a space which was attracting large crowds, so I looked but didn’t

Wandering more freely in the main hothouse area, there’s a pair of iguanas, also from South America. They can be a little hard to spot, preferring to find a comfortable perch igh up, perhaps partly hidden by the luxuriant vegetation. Once they have been spotted, a crowd usually gathers below, looking upwards towards the roof.

Yet more of the pictures of the fabulous tropical butterflies at the Stratford on Avon Butterfly Farm. Only one more batch after these.

More butterfly pictures from the hothouse at Stratford on Avon.

The Stratford on Avon Butterfly Farm has a few tropical insects which aren’t butterflies: fire ants and some stick insects. But these are housed in vivariums, alongside axolotls, toads and a few snakes.

This was on the ground of the main hothouse, possibly a tropical cockroach of some kind which had hitched along for the ride.

UPDATE: on iNaturalist, drtimk IDs this as being a giant burrowing cockroach, native to the tropical zone in Australia.

A brief clip of the artificial stream in the Stratford on Avon Butterfly Farm. It feeds a large pool, heaving with koi carp.

More of the tropical butterflies at the Stratford on Avon Butterfly Farm. We went in just after they had opened for the day, when the hothouse was still warming up. So many of the insects were cooperating with having their pictures taken by resting on leaves or feeding at the food stations.