Butterflies and the Market

Today we took our international student to the Farmer's Market in St. Jacobs and to the butterfly Conservancy in Cambridge.   I had intended to get pics at the market but it was extremely busy today so that just didn't happen.   We talked a fair bit... learned that in France they sell things by weight or by the 10's.   So he found it quite interesting that we do it differently here.   He finds there is good in both systems.   Our way is easier, but their way is more accurate.

We had a good day.

my son looks for quail...and found a butterfly in the process of dying. :(

my careful and very gentle lad caught one of the quail. It was rather neat watching him with it, but then he needed to let it go as we don't want the quail thinking people contact is a good thing.

On a further note, the quail are there because they are scavengers and so will eat the bugs that come from having a hot humid environment, and they will also help clean up the dead butterflies.  They have three kinds there: common, chinese painted and freyal?    I'm not sure on the last one. 

My Student really likes this fig tree, he likes how the roots go down to the ground.

aren't the butterflies pretty?

I talked with one of the staff for a while.  Learned they do homeschool programs.  She talked about them for a bit and my son got quite intrigued by one of the classes she'll be offering, so we will most likely do that.   We learned that most of the butterflies come from farms in the Philippines and in rainforest areas.    This encourages the farmers to buy sections of the rainforest and protect it from destruction.    It's a good sustainable agriculture for them.   

They have a fellow (Craig?) who's whole job is to hang the cocoons. They hang them or place them in the same way they are found in their natural habitat. So some are placed flat, others are an angle, and others up and down. Some cocoons wiggle when you pick them up and that makes it difficult to place them on in just the right spot. Putting the glue on the wrong spot will kill them.

this pretty lacewing was VERY hard to get a picture of. She moves VERY quickly and only lands for short periods of time.

My student intrigued by butterflies.

My son fascinated by the birds. :) Both needs met, fun had by all. :)

They had this display of African (I think) nymphs. The females are very large and green, the male (you can see the antennae) are so much smaller and are brown. I never would have thought they were the same type of insect.

they had a whole whack of these finches. They add them just for colour and flight. They mostly eat seeds and just keep things busy.

They had this poster up of the types of butterflies they get in. They rarely get in Atlas Moths. They also don't like the butterflies to lay eggs because they simply can't keep up with the amount of food some of them would naturally eat.

We did see one of the butterflies laying eggs on the citrus tree they had up though.  It was rather neat watching her.  She'd lay one here and there.   all these little bumps of yellow in the edges of the leaves.

We finished up our time looking through some of the interactive displays they have set up. Here's Dad looking through a display with son. :)

the lad here is being a bit of a goob. He so enjoys being an eight year old. :) i really liked the wall displays, and my student mentioned how much he enjoyed them as well. He said "It was very pleasant to look at all the displays."

Needless to say, I took tons of pictures but I can't post them all up here. :)

We had an excellent day, and life experiences help us to learn more about each others countries and how they operate.   A slide show to finish us out I think would be good.  Enjoy.  :)