Viewers Recommend Sunday Morning viewers tell us their favorite Diversions. Email Sunday Morning about your favorite places. The zebra longwing is just one of dozens of species flying freely through the exhibit. The new Puelicher Butterfly Wing of the Milwaukee Public Museum has become the place to see some fancy flights this summer. The highlight is a glass-enclosed tropical garden which serves as a showcase for a changing cast of 20 or more exotic species of butterfly from around the world.
Visitors are free to wander through the garden and get as up close and personal as they can.
Begun more than a century ago, the collection serves as a specimen repository for various studies involving lepidoptera. The monarch butterfly makes a yearly migration from wintering grounds in Mexico to as far north as Canada and back. The 4,000-mile trip is by far the longest insect migration in nature. An outline of this journey is available at the University Of Minnesota's Monarch Lab site. One of nature's best indicators of the health of an environment, butterflies teach us a great deal about habitats and change.