After weeks of unrelenting cold, I found myself longing for a respite, so by mid-morning I was headed for South Deerfield and the Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory. First I stopped in Amherst to print an admission discount coupon, then continued on North Pleasant Street to Meadow Street to Route 116. As I turned sharply north at the intersection, the cup of coffee I had brought with me overturned and the entire contents spilled into the car. “Oh [unprintable],” I thought, “Deal with it,” and pulled over to the side of the road to clean up.
By 11:30 I was at my destination. The outer room of the Conservatory houses various animal exhibits and also informational displays on such topics as What do butterflies eat? What’s the difference between butterflies and moths? What are the parts of a butterfly’s anatomy? What is the butterfly life cycle? Do they hibernate?
The other tropical insects in glass enclosures included such species as the Australian Stick Bug (Ctenomorphodes briareus), the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach (Gromphadorhina portentosa), the Prickly Devil (Eurycantha horrida), and Jungle Nymph (Heteropteryx dilatata). Of course I loved the poison dart frogs, the Dendrobates, and was fascinated by the lizard Tupinambis teguixin. These thumbnails are my best shots of these animals:
The inner room of the Conservatory is where the butterflies are free to flit about, and it’s quite an amazing sight. I strolled along the paths and sat for a spell on the benches, enjoying the warmth and the sensation of being in a tropical paradise, lush with foliage and exotic insects. Aren’t these beautiful creatures?
Here are some thumbnails of the vegetation (on the right, papaya):
These were two interesting sights: a nectar feeding station and butterflies hatching:
I could not get any photographs of butterflies in flight — I especially wanted to capture the Blue Morpho (genus Morpho) — and will try to figure out how to do that.
When I was done with the butterflies, it was still early in the afternoon, so I decided to take in another museum in the Valley. I headed south on 5-10 and three miles down the road merged onto I-91 going south to Holyoke, to the Wistariahurst Museum. My directions said to get off 91 at Exit 18, which is one of the Northampton exits, and at that point I was back on Route 5, going south along the River until I turned left at Dwight Street and followed it a few blocks to Appleton Street. Here I got lost in a maze of one-way tree-named streets, though when I looked at a map later, it was easy to find the museum, which occupies an entire city block in Holyoke, bounded by Cabot, Pine, Hampshire, and Beech Streets. There was plenty of on-street parking.
I first visited the Carriage House, which I discovered had recently been extensively renovated; there was a grand re-opening a week ago. I glanced at the exhibit “Recreation and Cultural Life in Holyoke,” but my real reason for venturing in was — you guessed it — to see the Frog Circus. And there it was, as bizarre as I had imagined it! It was hard for me to believe that these were real frogs.
The main house was open for tours from noon to 4 today, and for $5, a docent provided a personalized tour of the 26-room house. It’s a fascinating place: Wistariahurst, named for the beautiful vines surrounding the house, was the home of the silk manufacturer William Skinner and his family. In 1843, at the age of 19, William immigrated from England and established the Unquomonk Silk Mills on the banks of the Mill River near Northampton. In 1874, a disastrous flood destroyed Skinner’s mills; when the city of Holyoke invited him to rebuild there, he took them up on the offer. After reconstructing their original home, which had been moved piece by piece to Holyoke, the Skinner family maintained a fashionable residence at this Cabot Street location until they deeded the property to the City of Holyoke in 1959.
As you might imagine, the Skinner family was both wealthy and influential, and their name became quite well-known in business and philanthropy. Wistariahurst, as it looks today after painstaking restoration, reflects the elegant and refined tastes of several generations of Skinners, most notably that of William and Sarah’s educated and accomplished daughter Belle. A collector of rare musical instruments, she enlarged the house to include a Music Room; she also worked extensively on the grounds, which are being restored to what they looked like in 1928, when she died unexpectedly of pneumonia.
The docent on duty this afternoon was knowledgeable and enthusiastic, and insofar as I’ve always been interested in local history, textiles, and women’s history, I really enjoyed the tour and learning about this prominent Western Massachusetts family.
Stone lions guard the entrance on Cabot Street:
Here’s a view of the house from Pine Street:
