Blue Morpho, wings closed
Morpho peleides
Blue Morpho · Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden · 7 February 2026
A Blue Morpho with its wings closed in the butterfly house at Fairchild. In the rainforests of Central and South America this is how it rests, on a trunk or a leaf in the understory, and how it stays alive.
Closed, a Blue Morpho gives away nothing of the colour it is named for - just this dead-leaf brown with a row of owl-like eyespots down each wing, meant to startle a bird that has already worked out where the insect is. The blue only exists in flight, or with the wings spread, which is presumably why almost every photograph of this species shows one or the other and so rarely both.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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