Everybody's chased a butterfly at one time or another.  It's real work these days as they seem to be becoming rarer with each passing year.  I see a few saddle up to the neighbour's butterfly attracting plants.  But for most of the images on this page, you might say I 'cheated'.  While in Scotland, I stumbled upon Edinburgh's Butterfly and Insect World.  It takes your breath away when you first walk in and see so many brilliantly coloured butterflies fluttering through the air.  This facility is a tropical atrium which houses about 2,000 butterflies from 5 continents.  At a temperature of 25C (75F) with a humidity of 70%, exotic plants, trees, shrubs and flowers abound to create the butterfly's natural habitat and provide their food supplies.  I wandered for hours!  I chased every winged insect in the place!  

    Months later, I visited the Butterfly Conservatory located at Niagara Falls, Ontario.  Again, beauty abounds as you see local, as well as exotic, butterflies from all over the world.  I wandered for hours (again)!

    But the best experience has to be the Monarch butterfly fall migration that takes place at Canada's southern most tip, Point Pelee.   Butterflies filter down from all over Ontario and congregate at the 'Point' until the winds are favourable for their flight across Lake Erie, part of their 6 week, 3,500 km journey down to the Sierra Madres mountains of Mexico.   Monarch's are unique in that they are the only butterfly to fly south for the winter.  While most generations live about a month or so, the migrating generation is long-lived.  The caterpillars feed on the increasingly scarse milkweed plant and sadly, their numbers are diminishing.   

Click HERE if you didn't get here from "Gallery of Butterflies"