Who can drive around the bush or walk in a beautiful garden and not help noticing all the beautiful and sometimes very brightly colored butterflies flying around in all shapes and sizes. The thing is that most people do notice them and love looking at them but not many people know much about them. Butterflies are in a way like birding in that you need to look at the butterfly and then try and locate it in a book to see what its called. The problem is that most butterflies are very fast fliers and they often sit resting with their wings closed vertically above them, which can make identification difficult plus they are difficult to get close to.
But butterflies are probably the most well known of all insects and many peoples favorite insects. Adults normally have beautiful colors and feed primarily on nectar but they also get nourishment from rotting fruit, animal dung and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt. Butterflies have four stages in their development namely egg, larva, pupa and adult. The larval or caterpillar stage feed on different plants depending on specie and some are even host specific only feeding on one kind of plant or family of plants.
Lets look at a few common Butterflies that you normally see driving around and what they are called, these butterflies are great to point out, as they are very pretty!
African Monarch (Danaus chrysippus)
The African Monarch is a very common butterfly that you see al the time flying around, the larvae of this butterfly feeds on the Milkweed family of plants, because the plants are poisonous it makes the butterfly foul tasting and not palatable to predators and this is why he also flies very slowly as he knows he does not have to worry about anything eating him. He is mainly orange and black, typical warning colors that he is poisonous and not good to eat.
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African Monarch Butterfly ( Danaus chrysippus), image from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Broad –bordered Grass Yellow (Eurema brigitta)
The Grass yellow is also a fairly common butterfly and they are hard to miss as they are a very bright yellow color. They are relatively slow fliers and stay close to the ground. You can often see them in small groups around water and animal dung. The larval host plant for this butterfly is: Hypericum aethiopicum and Cassia mimosoides.
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Broad bordered grass yellow ( Eurema brigitta), image from Wikipedia.
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Citrus Swallowtail (Papilio demodocus)
The Citrus Swallowtail is also a very difficult butterfly to miss, you see them almost all the time, it is a rather large butterfly (wingspan 85mm) compared to others and flies slow enough so that you can see it clearly. It is a beautifully colored butterfly with black bands, spotted and speckled with yellow; they also on the hind wings have 2 black, blue and orange eyespots. The larvae of this butterfly are sometimes a pest in citrus trees as they can consume large quantities of leaves.
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Citrus Swallowtail (Papilio demodocus), image from Wikipedia
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Scarlet Tip (Colotis danae)
A small but beautiful butterfly and often seen in savanna and thornveld country, as the name suggest it has very bright scarlet color wing tips. This is a very fast and restless butterfly and for this reason very difficult to get close to. Host plants are Maerua angolensis and Cadaba natalensis.
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| Scarlet Tip (Colotis danae), image from Wikipedia. |
Brown- veined white (Belenois aurota)
The Brown veined white is probably one of the most common butterflies especially of the white butterflies, further down in South Africa they also annually do huge migrations over the interior millions in number. Their larvae host plans are Boscia oleoides and Maerua cafra.
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Brown veined white (Belenois aurota), image from Wikipedia
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Diadem (Hypolimnas misippus)
The Diadem is a fascinating butterfly, it occurs almost everywhere in Africa and also a great part of the Indo-Australian region. The males and females look completely different so much so that they have different common names; the Diadem also displays the best example of mimicry in the animal kingdom. The female Diadem performs the mimicry and she mimics the African Monarch or Milkweed Butterflies, these butterflies are poisonous and distasteful to predators leaving the female Diadem safe. They look so similar that it is almost impossible in the field to tell them apart and what is even more remarkable is that where the Diadem occurs she has up to four color forms matching the color of the Milkweed butterflies found in the same area. The larval host plant for this butterfly is Asystasia spp, Portulaca spp and Talinum spp.
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| Diadem (Hypolimnas misippus) image from Wikipedia |
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| Female Mimic (Hypolimnas misippus), image from Wikipedia |
Blue Pansy (Junonia oenone) and Yellow Pansy (Junonia hierta cebrene)
The Blue and Yellow pansy are also very comon butterflies and you can see them everywhere especially in the warmer parts of the day. These two species are a bit easier to get close to and you can normaly get a good veiw of them as they settle on the ground or on rocks slowly closing and opening their wings. The host plants for the Blue pansy are: Asystasia gangetica, Barleria stuhlmannii and Adhatoda natalensis. For the Yellow pansy: Adhatoda natalensis, Asystasia gangetica, Barleria pungens and Ruellia cordata.
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| Yellow pansy (Junonia hierta cebrene), image from Wikipedia |
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Blue pansy (Junonia oenone), image from Wikipedia
The above butterflies we just looked at are buterflies that are easily found and will give you a good start in butterflies, although they are hard to identify sometimes just becouse they are so small and fast it is still enjoyable and challenging and just like birding a lot of fun to go with your book and binoculars and try and see how many you can ID and tick. Of course there are many more species we could have put on the blog, some species you can also look up and study are species like Autumn leaf vagrant, African Migrant, Cabbage White, Common blues, Orange tip, Jokers and the Charaxes family these are also butterflies often seen and will give you a great building block.
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