Tag: butterflies

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Our Butterfly House

By Christian Begeman

The February blahs. You know what I’m talking about. The weather is brutal at the worst and a tease at best … sometimes hinting at spring then turning icy and gray all over again. The air is irritatingly dry. When the sun does shine, everybody looks like they are imitating Clint Eastwood’s famous squint due to the glare from the ice and snow. February in South Dakota is the time of year where winter really starts wearing on a person. A lot of folks get so antsy for warmer weather they hop a plane and head south in search of beaches and sunshine. I can’t say I blame them.

Recently I found a place right here in Sioux Falls that helped cure my February blahs. Not that it needed finding. The Sertoma Butterfly House has been here for quite some time. It’s just that I had never visited before. Shame on me. The temperature is always 80 degrees and the humidity is kept at a tropical level. The flight room is like a giant greenhouse so when the sun shines you can really feel it warm your bones. The butterflies do too. They are most active when the sun shines and they often flitter about just inches from you as you walk the paths among the flowers and foliage.

For a photographer the place is a great chance to test out a macro lens. The butterflies are somewhat used to human presence and if you are slow and patient, it isn’t that difficult to ease up on a colorful beauty while feeding to get some really interesting close-ups. It’s also a chance to learn. Most of the butterflies in the exhibit are not native to South Dakota, so you won’t see many of them in the wild … unless you plan on visiting the Central American tropics that is. I was able to see and shoot a Glasswing butterfly that has transparent wings. I didn’t even know such an animal existed.

If you don’t have a macro lens, that’s OK. The place is a wonderful destination for kids and thus great opportunities for kids’ photos. I invited my niece and nephew to come see the butterflies last week. They are ages two and three so their attention span presented a challenge, but nevertheless I was able to get some cute candid shots of them checking out the butterflies, fish and turtles.

Recently the Sertoma Butterfly House added a new attraction that is great for the kids as well as adults. The Purdy Marine Cove not only has an amazing display of coral exhibits (one aquarium looks like it was the inspiration for Pixar’s Finding Nemo) but also a new touch pool. If you ever wanted to know what a small shark, helmet crab, or stingray feels like, you won’t be disappointed. My nephew Bo wasn’t too sure he wanted to touch anything when he first laid eyes on the touch pool, but after he warmed up to it, it was tough pulling him away.

According to their brochure, the Sertoma Butterfly House is one of only 28 independent, year-round butterfly houses in the United States. When you stop and think about it, that’s pretty cool. I mean, who knew I just had to drive over to Sertoma Park in southern Sioux Falls to soak up some tropical weather and beat those February blahs?

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Elusive Monarchs

By Christian Begeman

September 26, 2009 was the date I first set foot in Sica Hollow State Park. I had heard of the park’s beauty in autumn and always wanted to go, plus I had just purchased a new camera. What better way to test out the new gear than exploring one of South Dakota’s most noted and mysterious places? I didn’t find any ghosts or spirits walking the trails, but I did witness beautiful and saturated fall colors due to recent wet weather. I found rich oranges, yellows and reds along the streams and horse trails. The new camera got plenty of work and the trip turned out to be very successful. Two photos I took that day were later published in the July/August 2010 South Dakota Magazine article”Ten Naturally Beautiful Places.” Getting my first full-page photo in a real and noted magazine was pretty exciting stuff for a country boy from Ziebach County.

I have returned to the park a handful of times since, the most recent being last weekend. Why would I make the three-hour trip before the colors of fall season have appeared, you may ask? This time, I went in search of a different kind of colorful phenomenon — the monarch butterfly. At the end of August and into early September the annual monarch migration south to Mexico comes right through our state. Sica Hollow, which is located on the edge of the Coteau des Prairies, is located on one of the main highways for these orange blazes of color as they make their way south.

Last year, on the first weekend in September, I went to Sica Hollow on a hunch. The last week of August, I had happened across 25 to 30 monarchs feeding on Maximillian sunflowers and ironweed in the Coteau Hills near Clear Lake while working on another project. I deduced that the migration was beginning and set off to Sica Hollow the following weekend. The hunch paid off. I was rewarded with a spectacle that would make most nature lovers’ pulses quicken. Around a hundred monarchs were fueling up on nectar in the upper hills of the park. I was able to get close enough to one of their roosting sites just before sundown to get a series of photos showing 20 to 30 butterflies crowding on the same tree branch. It is a sight I won’t soon forget. It is also a sight that I’m now realizing may be much harder to duplicate than I first thought.

You see, this time around I was skunked twice at the same sight. I only saw two monarchs at the park in two tries two weeks apart. It could be the drought and/or the unseasonably warm weather that is keeping the butterflies’ numbers low this year. It is hard to say. Whatever it is, it seems disappointingly ironic to me. I say that because I’ve seen single monarchs fluttering amongst the wildflowers in many of my other state park travels this summer.

South Dakota’s weather has never been what one would call predictable. The appearance of autumn’s colors on the fringes of Sica Hollow in early September is proof that things are off a bit this year. It looks to me like the prime fall color is around two or maybe even three weeks early this year. Looking back at the dates of my other visits to Sica Hollow demonstrates the differences. When I was there in late September of 2009 the prime color was just before peak. On my trip there in mid-October of last year, it was about a week after peak colors and this year I’m seeing fall colors start as early as Sept. 8.

One of the essentials to shooting good fall foliage is correctly guessing when the best time is to view the most turning trees. I try to catch it early rather than later as I don’t trust the notorious west wind from stealing the gold from the trees before I have the chance to photograph them. All in all, trying to outguess the weather is actually one of the fun things about nature photography. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I’ve learned that when I guess correctly, I need to drink it in and enjoy it for all it is worth, because who knows if and when the particular beauty of that particular day will come around again. So happy hunting and may you fill your memory cards with all sorts of beautiful South Dakota fall color this year. Good luck!

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog. To view Christian’s columns on other South Dakota state parks and recreation areas, visit his state parks page.



Posted on by — Leave a comment

Sertoma Butterfly House and Marine Cove

By Rebecca Johnson

It was my birthday last Saturday and, among other festivities, my husband and I visited the Sertoma Butterfly House and Purdy Marine Cove at 4320 Oxbow Avenue in Sioux Falls. The Butterfly House opened in 2002 and was built with funding from the Noon Sertoma Club. The Purdy Marine Cove addition, made possible by donations from Charles Purdy, opened the fall of last year. The butterfly flight room is a popular winter destination because it’s kept at a temperate 80 degrees, but that temp felt cool compared to the 95 degree weather.

Nearly 1,000 butterflies from around the world flit around the little indoor garden with waterfalls, streams and skylight for natural light. I found the Blue Morpho to be most remarkable, with its shimmering wings and impressive size. Many were at least 4 inches wide.

Touching the butterflies is discouraged because it could damage their sensitive feet, but if one lands on your hair or clothes it is OK to take it for a ride. Kory Willard, Volunteer Coordinator and General Curator, had tips for those who would like to pick up a hitchhiker.”The best thing you can do is wear bright clothing, like the type of clothing that will show up under black light,” says Willard.”That’s the type of UV perspective butterflies will perceive.” He also suggests coming on a sunny day and sitting quietly in direct sunlight on one of the garden’s benches.

And flash photography is OK in the butterfly flight room, but not so in the darkened Marine Cove housing the tropical fish.”Some of the fish can perceive beyond the boundaries of the tank they are in,” says Willard.”With flash photography it stimulates a fear response in a lot of fish because it simulates lightning, signaling a pending storm or crashing waves.” Even so, it’s fun to just observe the thirteen freshwater and saltwater aquariums with their kaleidoscope of colors. The newest attraction is the 2,500 gallon touch pool made possible by a donation from Richard and Eloise Elmen and designed by Willard and Grant Anderson, Curator of Fishes. It’s a bit like a tropical petting zoo where we found the stingrays to be quite slimy and the sharks a bit scratchy. But I’m not sure how to describe the starfish. You will have to find out for yourself.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

The Monarch Mystery

Thousands of monarch butterflies are fluttering through eastern South Dakota on their way to Mexico, where they will spend the winter. Their annual migration has stumped scientists for decades. This generation of monarchs has never been to Mexico, so how do they know where to go?

To better understand the mystery, here’s a brief synopsis of the monarch life cycle. In the spring, when monarchs head north, they fly only a short distance before they lay eggs. That dramatically shortens their life span, and soon they die. The cycle repeats through the spring, so the butterflies that eventually arrive in South Dakota may be the great-grandchildren of the monarchs passing through right now. Theoretically, they shouldn’t know a thing about Mexico.

On Thursday, a group led by Jody Moats of the Adams Homestead and Nature Preserve gathered at Spirit Mound north of Vermillion to tag monarchs. The tiny, sticky dots affixed to a wing help researchers track their flight and provide other data that might someday help solve the monarch mystery. Click the image above to watch a short video of the tagging.