Like pretty much everything else, the annual butterfly show at Cincinnati’s Krohn Conservatory took a break in 2020. The show started in 1996, and for the first couple of years was called simply The Butterfly Show. Recent shows have featured butterflies from a specific country or region. The 2019 show, with a blog entry here, featured Butterflies of Ecuador. Nothing was featured in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The show has returned in 2021 with the Butterflies of Bali.

The pandemic is not, by any means, over. Vaccines have greatly reduced the rate of new cases in the United States and led to events like the butterfly show being allowed but things are hardly back to normal. Attendance is through time-stamped tickets which are limited to forty per hour. The Butterfly Showroom is completely cleared between groups. I happened to be the first of my group which gave me a chance to capture an essentially empty show area.

The showroom was decorated with items that I assume were Bali-inspired including a pair of rather trim-looking Buddhas. In verifying that these slender fellows were indeed Buddhas, I discovered that Bali is more than 85% Hindu and less than 1% Buddhist. I guess there were no Vishnu statues in the prop room.

The brochure I was given at the show contains names and photos of the various species in the exhibit but I did not try to identify them when I took these photos and my willful ignorance continues with this posting.

My ignorance extends to all of the flora pictured with the fauna and I don’t even have a brochure to aid in guessing. 

To support all of the flitting they do, the butterflies are provided with a number of free nectar buffets placed throughout the showroom.

Despite every timeslot being sold out, there were never anywhere near forty people in the showroom while I was there. Thirty to forty-five minutes seemed to be the typical amount of time spent in the showroom, and attendees somehow staggered their arrival and departure so that no more than twenty to twenty-five people were present at one time. 

I headed out after about forty-five minutes. The exit path passes right by the Butterfly Nursery. Butterflies come from neither eggs nor storks but from cocoons spun by caterpillars that are sometimes as colorful as the butterflies they become and sometimes not attractive in the least. The show runs through September 6 so there is plenty of times for these little guys to shed their cocoons and become part of the big show.