Monday, April 16, 2012

Butterflies of Fraser's Hill!!!


Hey ya'll 

A full week has passed and it is finally time for those butterflies form Fraser's Hill to come off the spreading board and into their respective storage/display cases. And about time too!!! I have simply been dying to remove these from the board and appreciate the full beauty of their wings without the tracing paper covering!!! It is a pity that I was only at Fraser's Hill for a day and, whether it was because of my mediocre butterfly-catching skills, severely inefficient equipment or a little bit of both, these were only some of the butterflies that I managed to catch... and there were more! So much more fluttering and flying around... just out of reach, and I would have liked to at least have obtained one of each butterfly that was fluttering around  Fraser's Hill square that day. Oh well, there is always next time!!! And I like to think of these occasions as me giving the butterflies a sporting chance!!! For everything that I take, there should be at least several dozen more than "get away". And that is how I avoid over-collecting these fine and beautiful insects. Anyway without further delay, please observe some of the more "common" butterflies that can be found quite regularly around and about Fraser's Hill.

Graphium sarpedon
Parantica sita
Terinos clarissa
Melanocyma faunula 
Besides these butterflies, I also managed to find a rather small but quite attractive moth that nearly got away (I have not caught a butterfly/moth in so long I momentarily forgot the method of storing them and it fluttered out from between my fingers as I stood in a temporary daze) but I managed to find it again eventually as I crossed the road and it (or another individual like it anyway) fell from the tree and into my hat!!! Talk about one stroke of good fortune! 

Kranada lucidaria
Now all of this aside, I'm afraid that I must turn to the online community once more to help me with some identification work here. I found this butterfly just as I was about to leave Fraser's Hill, on the walls of one of the resorts in the area. I can place it in the family pieriidae but that's as far as I am willing to hazard a guess so I would be most grateful for any help here with identification of this species.

Dorsal view
Ventral view
Hey guys, the butterfly has been identified as the Banded puffin (Appias pandione lagela) courtesy of Khalid Fadil.
Thank you! 

In the meantime, I suppose you can guess that this has turned out to be a very good month for butterflies indeed so do stay tuned and do expect a lot more butterfly-posts from now on. The amateur lepidopterist is back in the house! 

Cheers,
Cyren

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Don't you think it would have been better to keep the butterflies alive and fluttering around the hills and gardens for everyone to enjoy? Thanks to people like you, there are less and less butterflies in places like Fraser's Hills!