Read a Book

You can find some great books about butterflies at the Pleasure Island branch of the New Hanover County Library.

See Butterflies Locally

Learn more about the butterflies and the plants they eat at the New Hanover County Arboretum (6206 Oleander Drive).

You can see butterflies up close at the Butterfly House at Airlie Gardens (300 Airlie Rd).  New butterflies are released on Tuesdays during the summer months.

Learn more about butterflies 

Learn more about Monarch Butterflies by watching this cool video about Amazing Animals from National Geographic Kids.

A-Want to know something amazing? Butterflies taste their food with their feet!

E-An exciting adventure would be to watch butterflies released into the Butterfly House at Airlie Gardens.

I-The most interesting thing about butterflies is that they go from a crawling caterpillar to a flittering butterfly.

O-Ooh – did you know there are almost 18,000 types of butterflies around the world? 175 of them are in North Carolina.

U-To understand more – check out a book at the Pleasure Island public library.

Did You Know?

Butterflies go through four stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed plants because the larva need to eat them. Adult Monarchs will travel thousands of miles for winter.  It will be their children and grandchildren that return to North Carolina.

Both Monarchs and Swallowtails eat plants that make them taste bad to predators.

The NC Wildlife Foundation is working on a “Butterfly Highway” to create a network of native flowering plants to support butterflies, bees, and birds.

The NC Aquariums and other conservation leaders have planted over 1000 bluestem plants to help preserve the Crystal Skipper butterfly, which is only found along a 30-mile stretch of the NC coastline.