Butterfly Pavilion is winging its wondrous way to the Natural History Museum

Fluttering by butterfly decorations at your local store in the springtime?

The adorable pillows, vases, plates, glasses, framed artworks, and rugs covered in colorful flyers are not too difficult to find, even if you're not particularly looking.

For butterflies do famously lift us up, and we humans do love to festoon a room with their ethereal likenesses.

But what if you could enter a room — or a room of sorts, one that is open to sunshine and the fresh air — and encounter the real thing in powerful profusion?

That "room" exists in Exposition Park each spring and for much of the summer, just outside the Natural History Museum.

It's Butterfly Pavilion we're enthusiastically flapping over, an airy space that gives an assortment of fabulous butterflies a place to stretch their wings. And, of course, for admiring humans to watch them in bewitching action from just a short distance away.

Butterfly Pavilion opens for the 2025 season March 23; it will ride the breeze over several spectacular months, with an end date toward the end of August.

"Up to 30" species will be represented, with "hundreds of butterflies" prettily present within the pavilion's not-at-all-confining confines.

Mourning cloaks will be in the house, or rather the pavilion, and common buckeyes, too.

There's also the opportunity to learn about the spectacular cycle of how butterflies come to be, with eggs, caterpillars, and chrysalises all making fascinating showings.

As always, helpful, nature-smart staffers and docents are present to answer all of our commonly asked and completely quirky queries. "What do butterflies eat?" "Do they sleep?" "Do they sometimes dream of flowers or other butterflies?"

Okay, perhaps the last inquiry is a bit farfetched, but arrive with all of your buttery whimsies and scientific head-scratchers ready to roll; chances are as good as a butterfly is gorgeous that someone can provide answers.