Butterflies of Lahore - Plain tiger butterfly

Starting from this post, i am initiating a series of posts on butterflies of my city Lahore. There is already a post on butterflies of Islamabad here. I have few butterfly posts on butterflies of himalayas as well but right now i am starting with those of my own city lahore. All the shots are taken by me. The first one is Plain tiger butterfly Danaus chrysippus.


Plain tiger is probably the most common butterfly in urban cities like lahore. And it is also one of the easiest to capture because it is a slow mover. Not very fast so camera captures easily. You will find this one on roads, in gardens, everywhere. It is not fond of a specific plant, you will find it mostly on foliage. Here is the side shot of this butterfly. Remember there is not much of difference between the male and the female at least not to naked eye.


This butterfly is common in India, Pakistan and many other countries. One habit of this butterfly is that it spreads its wing so that full sun is at the back absorbing the heat of sun through its fully open wings and that is the time to capture it closely.


The next butterfly post would be on Common lime butterfly, another common butterfly of Lahore - Pakistan. This post is included in Macro Monday by Lisa's Chaos. So visit her blog for more macro shots.

Butterflies mating on my terrace garden

I found these butterflies mating in the leaves of my wisteria vine on my terrace. They remained there for almost whole day.






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White cabbage Butterfly

Welcome to another edition of macro monday.. It is difficult to attract butteflies if you are growing plants in containers. But planting the right plants at right places is the key. It appears to be a trifle task to capture a butterfly but it is not. This is probably some white cabbage butterfly. Still trying to confirm the identification. Sipping nector from my murraya plant on terrace.

Sometimes it takes hours capturing a butterfly. And the viewers are oblivious of the effort it is spent on the shot. Sometimes continuous shots are taken if butterfly is moving fast. Shutter speed matters a lot in this case. This one is another common butterfly of lahore. Just before rain she took shelter in the leaves.

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Trumpet honeysuckle and butterfiles in Lawrence garden

Here i am again with another edition of macro monday. Yes more butterflies in this post. I would post seperate on butterflies of lahore. And not just butterflies, capturing some hummingbirds wont be a bad idea though? Wild life is in full swing in urbans of lahore. Most shots are from Lawrence gardens also known as Bagh-e-Jinnah.
First is Plain tiger butterfly (Danaus chrysippus), Very common and easy to capture as its speed is not very fast. It spreads the wings easily and very beautiful indeed.

This one is Pioneer white butterfly (Belenois aurota) Very fast and difficult to capture. She does not like being photographed at all. I hardly manage to get few shots of hers. She is trying to get some nectar off trumpet honeysuckle the botanical name of which is Lonicera sempervirens.

Here is a trick to capture them easily. The small ones in pioneer butterfly group were much faster than those which were large. So i concentrated on large ones having large wings. not a bad deal at all.
This one was pretty fast as well and very small as compared to others butterflies. But capturing her back with spread wings was the challenge. I do not know her name, this is my first capture of her. She just adored alyssum flowers.
Another butterfly whose name i do not know. She was attracted to trumpet honeysuckle or Coral Honeysuckle, which is a hummingbird magnet. I also captured some hummingbirds, but the shots were not clear as i had no tele lens with my digital camera.
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Tropical milkweed and murraya on my terrace garden

Here i am again with another edition of macro monday. Hot summers are in full swing and i am busy mulching all my plants to save them from scorching sun. I will start with this beautiful butterfly hanging over my murraya plant on my balcony.And she is a frequent visitor here.
Another butterfly i captured but not at my terrace, in an open space instead. She is way faster to capture and i spent hours to get her.
This is Tropical milkweed. Botanical name Asclepias curassavica. This is first ever bloom of this plant in my garden. Initially i planted it just fro sake of attracting butterflies but the blooms changed my mind. I grew it from seeds last year. As the name implies it is more suited to tropics than its cousin butterfly milkweed asclepias tuberosa. It likes moist climate specially in hot summers. It is a bit drought tolerant as well. I am growing it in a 14 inches container on my terrace.
I captured this bee busy in a sunflower bloom. This species has gone wild in open areas of punjab. Not many bees are attracted but bees just love it. Could not resist few close ups.
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Dianthus and shirley poppy flowers

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Attracting wild life to your garden

It is not easy to establish a garden which would attract butterflies, bees, sun birds if you are living in an over populated urban city with lots of pollution around. Situation gets worse if you have as little space as i have got. Sure plants can be grown in containers and they will flourish but nothing compared to those which are nourished by sweet mother earth. After all, plants get to know they are in containers, nah? what about a patch full of self seeding bright wild flowers!!!

Although butterflies do visit my garden many times a day but this lemon tree just next to my home is something all the butterflies and bees just adore. Sometimes i think that they come all the way to sip nectar from this tree instead and in the way they also visit my garden. well i don't mind it either. My dwarf murraya tree does compete hard and tries to allure those butterflies back through its intense sweet fragrance. The competition goes on.
















This bee also visited my murraya tree just before coming here but i could not capture it there.
















This butterfly was wandering around these phlox flowers and they were hundreds in a row. something i wish i could ever grow.
















Now this wild flower garden is something i am talking about. Self seeding annuals in a natural way.
















Hope some day i will have a patch full of butterfly bushes with tons of butterflies around. Dreams never die actually.

Top Butterfly attracting flowers

Though i would submit a separate post on how to attract butterflies specially in lahore, right now i would focus on only which plants i have found attractive for butterflies.

1- First, butterflies are cold blooded insects so they love sunshine. They tend to prefer area which receives maximum sunshine.
2- Choose flowers rich in nectar. Have you wondered why there is not a lot of butterflies seen on Roses? nectar!!!!! Nectar rich flowers are usually single petal flowers having large seeds visible in the center. See the example of Dahlia below:

Good for butterflies, Nectar Rich










Not butterfly friendly, no nectar









Daisy is another common example. Others good flowers include following:

• scabiosa (pincushion flower)
• Lantana(specially blue flowered)
• buddleia (butterfly bush, white color variety survives in plains while purple one in hills)
• Asclepias curassavica(tropical milkweed)
• lemon/orange/tangerine
• Kniphofia(red hot pocker)
• Allium
• Cosmos
• Single petal dahlia
• Hibiscus
  

And last but not least Senecio confusus vine. In this march i had more than 200 blooms on this vine and every single day it was surrounded by butterflies.






Butterfly on my senecio vine





3-Choose flowers with sweet fragrance. One example is Murraya (Marwa, marwi), i have seen hundreds of butterflies on one single murraya tree near my home.

Note that butterflies usually appear in lahore from February-October. Also, Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees.