Spring ahead toward the butterflies 

Where To Start Your Visit with the Butterflies

A visit to the Butterfly Pavilion starts best with a stroll through the Nature Gardens, including a walk through the Pollinator Garden, which is a habitat for hummingbirds, butterflies, and honeybees. Throughout the Nature Gardens, you can find more than 600 kinds of plants—including California natives and others from around the world. Be sure to keep a lookout for other animals like lizards, squirrels, and more.

Butterflies come in every shade of the rainbow.

At the Butterfly Pavilion

The Pavilion houses more than 50 varieties of butterfly and moth, fluttering freely in a miniature ecosystem that offers them all of their favorite plants with none of their usual predators. Caterpillars fill their bellies, create cocoons, emerge as butterflies, feed on their favorite treats, mate, lay eggs, and eventually die peacefully of old age, all before our eyes. Kids can watch from inches away as butterflies uncurl their tubular mouths to draw nectar from a flower or check out the different kinds of treats each species prefers.

The museum staff are terrific and can help interested visitors discover which kinds of butterflies hang around which kinds of plants, look for and identify the different kinds of eggs, and recognize the different types of cocoon and chrysalis. Docents have large guide cards kids can use to help identify what they see.

And though it might be tough for some kids to resist the urge to touch or pick up the lovely residents, the good news is that, while we're not allowed to touch them, they don't have to live by the same rules. If you spend enough time in the Pavilion, you may get some gorgeous winged critter hitching a ride at some point; you could even stack the deck by wearing something colorful or floral to look more appealing.

RELATED: Spring Wildflower Hikes To See this Season's Bloom

Kids can get a close look at these beautiful insects.

The variety of insect and plant species in the Pavilion means that visiting multiple times can be well worth it, especially while indoor spaces remain closed, and not everything in LA is open. Why not bring a drawing pad and try to recreate a Monarch or a Swallowtail? Or hand your kids your camera and let them go on a photography expedition? There are so many ways to enjoy combining bugs and beauty. Just another reason our kids are lucky to be growing up in LA!

Tickets and Times for the Butterfly Pavilion

The Butterfly Pavilion is open from March 3 & 4 for members only, and there are special hours daily that are reserved for members.

Butterfly Pavilion open daily March 5 - August 13, 2023
10am-5pm (last entry 4:30pm)
Admission $8, free for members of the museum

Originally published October 3, 2013

Photos by Gina Cholick, courtesy of the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC)