This very attractive red base Jezebel was enjoying a pleasant breakfast
on the flowers growing amongst the long grass outside the accomodation
area in Bach Ma national park near Hue.
What the butterfly didn't realize was that danger was near at hand.
Check closely and you'll see another little critter looking for breakfast
on the far side of the flower - a small lynx spider! Butterflies
need to watch out for spiders lurking near flowers because the larger ones
do eat butterflies, however this spider is probably too small to tackle
something so large and it paid no attention at all to the butterfly. |
| These
butterflies are "puddling" beside the river that flows through Cat Tien
national park. There are at least three different species here,
the yellowish ones, a greenish individual with a light spot near the center,
top of the photo and a dead leaf mimic on the left-hand side.
However, it's a very good bet that every butterfly you see here is male,
because it's the male butterflies which engage in this behavior in order
to obtain the mineral salts which they pass on to the females at the time
of mating, which are required for the eggs to develop. |
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Anyway, enough of unidentified butterflies - I've managed to track down
the names of all of the others on this page, starting with this purple
sapphire.
It's certainly a beautiful butterfly but at first glance the name seems
wildly inaccurate, since there's no purple coloring visible anywhere.
However the mystery is solved when it opens its wings to reveal an irridescent
purple pattern on a dark brown background with red trim.
The purple sapphire belongs to the "hairstreak" family of butterflies,
which can be found throughout the world. Their most noticeable
characteristic is one or more thin tails which extend beyond the ends of
the rear wings. They use these little tails as imitations of
their antennae and go as far as moving their closed hind wings up and down
to make the imitation antennae move up and down just like the real ones.
Some species even turn around 180 degrees immediately after landing to
put their head where their tail was and their tail where their head was.
All of this behavior is done to confuse sharp-eyed birds into believing
that the imitation head is the real thing. If the bird attacks
the imitation head then it gives the butterfly an opportunity to escape,
and a small peck out of the wing has almost no effect at all on its ability
to fly.
Some of the purple sapphires I saw still had their little tails, but as
you can see this individual has lost its ones. Maybe this happened
when a bird attacked or maybe they just wore out and fell off.
Either way, it's still an attractive little creature. |
| Just
having a long tail doesn't make a butterfly a hairstreak; other families
of butterfly, like the swallowtails, also have extensions of their hind
wings. This common imperial has a very long pair of tails,
it belongs to a genus all of its own. |
 |
| This
white dragontail shows tail length taken to an even greater extreme; the
hind wings have become largely non-functional vestiges in support of the
tails. Despite this degree of ornamentation, this butterfly
flies extremely well, hovering over the flowers like drab little hummingbirds,
or like their sphinx moth cousins. The colors are a little
dull, but the frilly white edging and those see-through wings give it a
charm all of its own. There were many of these dragontails
in Bach Ma national park, and in Cat Tien national park I saw a green dragontail
which does indeed have small green patches on its wings, but it was very
skittish and in spite of several attempts it didn't allow me to get close
enough for a photo. |
 |
This common jester was flitting around beside the long path up to the Perfume
Pagoda, near Hanoi. Like most butterflies, it wasn't particularly
eager to have me approach but I was still able to get close to it by coming
in very, very slowly and pausing whenever it seemed nervous.
By the time I'd spent 5 or 10 minutes nearby it was totally habituated
to my presence, which is a good thing because when it landed in the position
you see here it was directly on top of a dried piece of grass.
I brought my hand in very slowly and pulled the grass to one side.
It lifted its legs to let the grass get past, but remained in place.
The orange and black stripes you see here are a very common pattern adopted
by insects all around the world to warn predators that they're toxic and
distasteful - or pretending to be toxic and distasteful. It's
interesting to see that the patterns on the wings of this butterfly are
also carried over to the body. |
 |
| A
common cruiser displays its understated elegance in the sunlight near the
ranger's station at Cuc Phuong national park, near Hanoi. |
 |
This knight butterfly belongs to a group of butterflies from different
families which get their common name from courtly titles. The
most well-known member of this group is the monarch butterfly, but there's
also the queen, viceroy, alderman, soldier, dukes, sergeants, barons and
even the jester you saw earlier. If you get enough of them
together then you could probably have a game of chess!
This butterfly has an interesting pattern of damage on its wings.
The chunk out of its left, hind wing might be from a bird pecking it, a
fairly common occurrence. In addition, if you compare the left
wings against the right wings you can see that there are far more white
spots on the right wings. This is probably because some of
the colorful scales have been lost from the right wings, allowing the white
substrate to be seen. This type of damage can happen if the
butterfly blunders into a spider's web - the scales adhere to the sticky
web, allowing the butterfly to escape. |
 |
| One
of the best places I found in Vietnam to photograph butterflies was a small
garden in the grounds of the tomb of the emperor Minh Mang near the old
imperial city of Hue. Located outside the city, the emperors'
tombs mostly escaped the terrible damage caused when communist troops overran
the city during the Tet Offensive. The small formal garden around
the stairs leading from the Sung An temple down to the lake was attractive
to more than just butterflies; there were also a number of colorful dragonflies
as well as spiders and a praying mantis. This grey pansy belongs
to the genus Precis (until recently called
Junonia), which
includes the buckeye butterflies which live in the Americas.
One characteristic of this genus is the epaulette-shaped zig-zags you can
see just behind the front edges of the top pair of wings. |
|
|
| The
same garden, the same epaulettes, the same genus and another butterfly
called "pansy", in this case the peacock pansy. As you can
see, this is a seriously attractive butterfly, but the large round eye
spots on both its front and hind wings aren't for looks, they're used to
scare off any birds which might attack. Not only do these eyespots
have imitation pupils, they also have imitation "catch lights", just like
real eyes! This butterfly has quite a large range throughout
Asia, and I've been lucky enough to see it once before, in
Japan. |
 |
The best time to look for butterflies is the daytime, and for most species
the sunnier it is the better they like it.
However butterflies don't just disappear from the face of the planet when
it's cloudy or the sun has gone down, though it might sometimes seem that
way. If it's nighttime or raining then they can sometimes be
found sheltering under leaves, waiting for the sun to come out so they
can return to their regular occupation of drinking nectar and looking for
a mate.
This red lacewing with its spectacular colors and patterns was spending
the night in Cat Tien national park near Saigon by roosting under a piece
of grass beside a trail. You can see the pair of sharp little
claws on the end of each foot which it uses to hook onto the foliage.
Perhaps these hooks are the reason why this butterfly chose a narrow piece
of grass to shelter under rather than a leaf, which would seem to offer
better protection from any rain which might happen; the hooks probably
allow it to hang on without expending any muscular effort. |
Check
out the Butterflies
of Northern Illinois, the
Spiders of Vietnam, the
Bugs of Indonesia and the
Bugs of Russia.
|
