If I were to tell you that peacocks and tigers often appear around my house, you might think that I live in the deep jungle. Actually I live in a small town. And I am not at all scared of the tigers who visit. In fact, you usually find me rushing to take a picture of any tiger who happens to be spending some time in the garden. And what do these tigers do in the garden? They visit flowers and sip the nectar! The tigers which visit me are butterflies!
A couple of years ago I began to develop an interest in these winged jewels in my garden and equipped myself with a butterfly identification book and a camera. I would prowl the garden in the mornings trying to take pictures of butterflies. In the evenings I would open my book and try to identify the insects I had captured in the morning. Rather like P G Wodehouse’s Lord Emsworth sitting in his study, engrossed in Whiffle’s The Care of the Pig, I would sit in my room, engrossed in my butterfly Bible—The Book of Indian Butterflies by Isaac Kehimkar.
Turning the pages of the book and drinking in the beautiful photographs is itself a sensuous experience. But what is even more thrilling are the names of the butterflies. Many hold military ranks—commodore, admiral, sergeant, sergeant-major etc. Then there are the noblemen—the dukes, archdukes, counts, earls, marquis and even royalty—queens, princes, emperors and nawabs. Other members of the butterfly court include courtesans, jokers and jesters.Earlier, people used to collect butterflies like postage stamps but today, many species are endangered and the way naturalists capture them is with a camera.
Usually butterflies flit amazingly fast from flower to flower but when they are at a cluster of flowers like for example at a lantana plant, they spend some time on every cluster sipping at each separate flowerlet, then it is easy to photograph them. If you are lucky, sometimes butterflies will pose for the camera. Once, a female Great Eggfly wandered onto our porch. A large dark brown butterfly with a white-edged border, she is a real beauty. She spread her wings in the sun to display her upperwing designs for a click, then she shut them to exhibit her underwings. She flitted about around me, showing her front and back and posed endlessly.
Butterflies play an important role in the ecosystem. The presence of butterflies indicates the health of the eco-system. It is said that if there are at least five different types of these winged jewels in an area, then the surrounding ecosystem is reasonably healthy. I have been able to identify more than forty different species in my garden. That’s a healthy ecosystem!
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