Floating Beauties – an Hour in a Butterfly Park in Klütz

Butterflies are one of the most beautiful insects. They are symbol for beauty, lightness and fugaciousness. I lately even painted my room with a huge dandelion flower of butterflies. It looks amazing!

So a few days ago I was again with a friend roaming around in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as I am doing my house-sitting (for another friend) in Germany again. And it happened that we saw a sign for a butterfly park. Immediately I was curious to visit that place.

The park is situated in Klütz, not far away from the Baltic Sea and Boltenhagen, a famous sea resort. At first sight it was nothing special outside but entering the huge hall gave me a relaxing feeling. There is a little shop corner, a great place and an outside terrace where to sit and have a coffee or a snack and palm trees in huge pots.

We have a coffee and then enter the butterfly park. I recommend: before going in get rid of heavy clothes! Inside the hall it is about 28°C and 95% humidity.

Butterflies are insects, they live only a short time and some are active in day time, others in nighttime. In this group comprise also skippers and moths. Some of them are parasites when they are still larvae. All of them use mimicry to hide from predators. Often the colors of their wings are bright and colorful, some represent eyes of huge birds. All have a light, flattering flight.

They live all over the world except of very cold and high places. They feed from plants and especially in the state of caterpillar they need huge amounts for feeding. Often they eat only one type of plants which make them sometimes ‘dangerous’ for domestic crops.

In the butterfly park they have only butterflies from South America and Asia. We could see 11 different kinds, from the huge Atlas Moth with its over 30 cm large wingspan to the long distance migrating Monarch Butterfly.

The word butterfly comes from the fact that they always like to feed on butter. If that is true… I doubt. But I know well there are a lot of honey smelling flowering shrubs that attract butterflies of all kinds like the Butterflybush.

The Monarch Butterfly is the only one I have seen in nature in Mexico where they live (and die) during winter time. Millions and millions hanging on trees. And have not seen them here..

On 700 sq we walked through a jungle-like area, listening to dripping water and the call of the small and colorful king quail, feeling the lightness of the floating butterflies around the head and observing some huge gold fish in a pond.

There are a few benches to sit on, for better observing and relaxing. I asked about the quails: they eat the ants which could be also dangerous to the butterflies when still in the eggs or later when in the state of a pupa. The quails are so tiny that sometimes I didn’t know where to look: below for not stumbling over a mini bird or up to the butterflies landing on my head.

All butterflies are from breeding stations. None is coming out of the wild. Very interesting fact: it is not possible to close a wild butterfly (for example domestic butterflies). They have a kind of life that they would fly against walls and windows until they are so weak that they die. It is similar to an inner orientation system. And as second fact: it is nearly impossible to feed different kinds of caterpillars as they eat a lot and different kinds of plants that it would be needed nearly five times more space just to grow the feeding plants for them. Knowing this I admired even more the beautiful little butterfly paradise they created here.

We spent about two hours in the butterfly park and it was definitely a perfect choice to ‘take something on the way’ that was not planed.


Schmetterlingspark Klütz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern/Germany:

For further information:
Schmetterlingspark Klütz website (in German)
short video of the Schmetterlingspark Klütz


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