Monarchs! Butterfly & Bird Festival, Coyote Hills, Fremont

This morning we attended the 13th Annual Butterfly and Bird Festival, held at Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont.  We’ve attended this event the past two years, too, and this just may be my son’s favorite festival.  It’s kind of funny, since my son isn’t usually into doing crafty type activities, but he absolutely LOVES the ones offered at this festival. Maybe it’s the theme?  He IS pretty crazy about birds and butterflies!

The first thing we did when we arrived this morning was check out the Nectar Garden to look for butterflies.  I always enjoy wandering around this garden, with so many butterfly-friendly flowers in a relatively small garden, surrounded by butterflies fluttering and bees (such a wide variety!) buzzing from flower to flower.

Today, I was lucky, and actually caught a few photos of a monarch!

Then we checked out the tables set up in the garden with information about the butterfly life cycle.  Several table were devoted to bottles, jars, and wire containers which contained a wide variety of caterpillars.  We enjoyed checking each bottle out and comparing them with the photos of the butterflies they would one day become.  My son enjoyed showing me the stages of the butterfly life cycle, explaining each step to me.  A man working one of the tables noticed my son’s enthusiasm and decided to show us something special, as long as we kept it a secret.  We promised!  He took us into the garden and showed us a monarch chrysalis, only hours away from which a butterfly would emerge.  It was perfectly clear, and we could see inside!  Beautiful.

After wandering around the garden a bit  more, my son was anxious to head to the craft tables.  A highlight was the butterfly headband….

Next stop? Face (in our case, hand) painting!  My son absolutely had to have a monarch painted on his hand…

We attended another butterfly event here only a couple weeks ago, where we did many of the other crafts.  You can see that post here… Nectar Garden Fun, Coyote Hills.

Lastly, we visited the tables selling butterfly-friendly plants, and purchased two milkweeds before heading home.  They are now planted in our garden!

Here are a few more photographs from our visit to the Nectar Garden today.  Love it here!!

Interested in visiting the Coyote Hills Nectar Garden?  It’s open Wednesday through Sunday, 10am-4pm.  The garden is free, but there is a $5.00/car entrance fee to the park.  For more information (location, directions, etc), check out the website… www.ebparks.org/parks/coyote_hills.

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