Key West's Nature Attractions
Experience Key West's natural beauty at these sights.
By:
Cammy Clark
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The kid-friendly attraction lets visitors watch caterpillars turn into majestic butterflies. Educational displays explain and show the metamorphosis. A butterfly’s life is short, like a flower’s, at just 2 weeks or so. Only 6 species mate at the conservancy --all the others arrive as chrysalis in weekly shipments from more than 10 tropical countries around the world. Once they hatch, the new butterflies join the garden party that also includes 35 species of exotic birds. The best time to go is when the sun is shining bright and the butterflies are most active.
stannate, Flickr
Now, the elegant home of American Classic Revival architecture -- but no running water -- is filled with the work of John James Audubon. In 1832, Audubon came to Key West and painted 2 White-crowned Pigeons on the cut branches of a Geiger tree, which he received permission to take from the Geiger property. The watercolor painting is featured in Audubon’s famed book Birds of America, but Audubon never stepped foot in the current house. It was built in 1846 after a hurricane destroyed Capt. Geiger’s original home. The second home was almost destroyed, too -- by bulldozers. In the late 1950s, Key West native Col. Mitchell Wolfson and his wife, Frances, saved the historical treasure from demolition and turned it into today’s museum now run by their family’s non-profit foundation.
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Educational videos and displays explain that corals are alive and that the nearby coral reefs are the “rainforests of the ocean.” The aquarium is home to sea horses, jellyfish, clownfish, rooster hogfish, great