The enchanting science of chasing butterflies

In early May, researchers ventured into Nagarahole to document the forest’s butterfly diversity. DH journalist Pavan Kumar H tagged along.

The first week of May was volatile for the bullion market, with gold prices hovering around Rs 1 lakh for 10 grams. But that didn’t stop V Gopikrishna from announcing to his team that he would gift a gold coin to anyone who spotted butterfly varieties such as the Five-bar Swordtail, Indian Cabbage White, Painted Sawtooth, Striped Pierrot, Clipper, Small Leopard, Shiva Sunbeam, and Indian Awlking in Nagarahole National Park. The grand prize? A traditional gold necklace (kasina sara) for anyone who sighted all of them.

Gopikrishna is a lepidopterist — someone who studies butterflies — and his desperation wasn’t without reason. A century ago, long before the Park was established, British scientists had documented these butterfly varieties in the region. But in the 15 years that Gopikrishna has been visiting Nagarahole, these species continue to elude him, even as they fascinate him just as much. Butterflies, the world’s second-largest pollinators after bees, are highly sensitive to changes in their environment. Their absence, he explained, is often a sign that the habitat has degraded.

I was accompanying him on one of his butterfly surveys in Nagarahole, a sprawling 848 sq km wildlife reserve nestled between Mysuru and Kodagu. He is conducting the surveys in association with the Karnataka forest department. As a journalist who couldn’t tell a moth from a butterfly, I had no chance of winning any gold. But the team he was leading — Santhosh S, zoology professor from Mysuru University, and Anusha K R, MSc in environmental science and sustainability — certainly did. They quickly brought me up to speed: butterflies have clubbed antennae, are colourful, and active during the day, while moths have feathery or straight antennae, are duller, and mostly active at night.

Over two days, I was in for a steep learning curve. This wasn’t my first visit to Nagarahole. As a safari enthusiast, I have photographed its tigers, leopards, elephants, Indian gaurs, and sloth bears on many occasions. But this was the first time I was swapping my telephoto lens for a macro lens, turning my attention to the park’s lesser-known beauties.

Half-km foray

We were waiting at the Veeranahosahalli gate of the park for a forest guard to join us. Since the survey would be conducted on foot, it was mandatory to have a guard familiar with the terrain and the movement of wild animals. They say, fear a forest that has elephants and sloth bears. Nagarahole is home to a large population of elephants, and boasts one of the highest densities of tigers and leopards in India.

While we waited for Gopikrishna to complete the formalities, Santhosh said butterflies were most likely to be found near water bodies, marshy patches, flowering plants, shrubs, and areas with a dense forest canopy.

As per the International Union for Conservation of Nature, India is home to 1,504 butterfly species, including 353 found in the Western Ghats. Karnataka alone has recorded 317 of these Western Ghats species, with 33 being endemic to the state. “There hasn’t been much scientific research on butterflies in Nagarahole, so we don’t know their exact number. A British era-study estimated that Kodagu and Nagarahole had roughly 300 species. We have managed to photographically record 210 of them,” Santhosh said.

Just a few minutes after driving into the buffer zone, I saw black, blue, orange, and white butterflies dancing in the sunlight. We parked our jeep at a distance and began walking towards a dry riverbed. “The conditions are ideal. Let’s start the Modified Pollard Walk,” Gopikrishna instructed his team. This is a standardised method used to survey butterflies in a specific area. The surveyor walks a straight path of about 500 metres within a specified period (in our case, 30 minutes), recording butterflies that appear within five metres to the left, right, and above. Any sightings beyond this range are not counted.

Anusha recorded the longitude, latitude, temperature, and humidity, using a handheld device, and jotted down the readings. No sooner had she finished than Santhosh and Gopikrishna began calling out butterfly sightings in quick succession: one Dark Blue Tiger, three Common Indian Crows, two Striped Tigers, 10 Grey Pansies, five Yellow Pansies, six Chocolate Pansies. “Common Leopard, another Striped Tiger, a Plain Tiger…” the names kept coming.

We were 300 metres into our walk when Shivakumar, forest watcher, tapped his machete against a tree — signalling danger. About 200 metres to our right, inside the bushes, a large female elephant was grazing on bamboo shoots. We quietly retreated to our vehicle and waited as the gentle giant moved deeper into the forest. “That was close,” said Anusha, visibly shaken — it was her first day in the field as a researcher. Gopikrishna reassured her that this was just the beginning, and went on to recount occasions when they had come face-to-face with tigers, leopards, sloth bears, and Indian gaurs, and even been chased by wild elephants.

Understanding animal behaviour is essential for conducting research in the wild. Gopikrishna, who also serves as president of the Nagarahole Conservation Society, said, “As long as we don’t threaten them, most wild animals don’t harm us. But elephants and bears are exceptions — they tend to attack humans out of fear as they have poor eyesight.”

We resumed our survey after 10 minutes and completed it without any further incidents. During the 500-metre walk, we counted 22 species, with the butterfly numbers exceeding 200. Two butterflies particularly caught my attention: the Tawny Coster and the Tamil Yeoman. I was eager to photograph them.

The Tawny Coster landed on a white flower and let me approach quietly. Breathing gently, I focused on it using my 100 mm lens. The vibrant orange and black stripes on its forewings stood out, and as it folded its wings, the light brown underside of its hindwings became visible. Capturing it on camera felt almost meditative — I could hear my own heartbeat. The Tamil Yeoman was quite the opposite. This bright orange butterfly, with brown tips on its wings and a distinctive white dot on its hindwing, kept my heart racing. I chased it for five minutes as it did not settle even for a moment. After much effort, I managed to click a few shots when its wings were fully spread out. It looked majestic.

Photographing butterflies requires special skills. It takes great patience just to get a ‘record shot’ — a photo that confirms the presence of a species, even if it doesn’t show all the details. “Without photographic evidence, the scientific community won’t accept the presence of a species. Moreover, butterfly species differ only in subtle ways (like dots, stripes, eye spots, and the spacing of patterns along their wing veins),” explained Santhosh.

He also noted that no camera in the world could truly capture their vibrant colours. He cited the example of the Common Tinsel, which has silver specks on its wings. “To the naked eye, the silver sparkles clearly, but no camera has yet been able to capture its glowing colours fully,” he continued.

Fallen angels

Now it was time for the opportunistic survey. Simply put, it is based on chance sightings — you are not bound by set paths or rules.

Our next stop was once a thriving habitat for the Plain Orange Tip, a species for which Gopikrishna had announced a gold coin bounty. The cool breeze and the fatigue of the overnight train journey from Hubballi to Mysuru were lulling me to sleep when Gopikrishna suddenly hit the brakes of the jeep he was driving. “Is that a Five-bar Swordtail?” he asked Santhosh, pointing to a puddle by the forest road. As we stepped out of our jeep, Gopikrishna turned to his team with a grin: “Here’s your chance to win a gold coin!”

The excitement was short-lived. A closer look at the photo revealed it was a Spot Swordtail — a close relative of the butterfly we were going after. While the more common Spot Swordtail has five white spots on its wings and a sword-like hindwing, the rarer Five-bar Swordtail has five distinct stripes.

When we reached our destination, a riverine patch, not a single butterfly was in sight. “To prevent elephants from venturing into neighbouring villages, the forest department fenced the area four years ago. In the process, the water body around it was affected, and since then, we haven’t sighted the Plain Orange Tip,” he explained.

He reminded me again that even the slightest change — whether in canopy cover, grass density, temperature shifts, or the spread of invasive species — could seriously, and sometimes irreversibly, affect a butterfly’s life cycle. Disappointed, we started our return journey.

Along the way, I witnessed another human-made threat. The Public Works Department is asphalting the state highway connecting Mysuru and Kodagu and it cuts through the Nagarahole reserve. This work is killing tens of male butterflies every day. That day, we saw the crushed bodies of Dark Blue Tigers, Double Branded Crows, and Common Crows scattered across the under-construction road. They had been hit by vehicles while mud-puddling, a behaviour where butterflies gather on moist surfaces like damp soil, animal dung, urine, or even decaying flesh to absorb nutrients such as sodium, calcium, phosphate, nitrogen, and proteins. “The nutrients and proteins collected by males are passed to females as a nuptial gift through their sperm, helping produce healthier eggs,” explained Santhosh.

Pointing to the ‘fallen angels’, he said these were migrating from the Western Ghats to parts of the Eastern Ghats. This happens before the onset of the southwest monsoon (March to May). Another round of migration occurs before the northeast monsoon sets in (October to November). However, due to lack of large-scale, synchronised studies, experts are unsure whether these one-way journeys are completed by the same butterflies or their offspring, he observed. The threat to them is overlooked in development projects in ecologically sensitive areas, especially on roads and highways.

Apart from human threats, butterflies also have to contend with natural enemies such as flycatchers, bee-eaters, spiders, lizards, frogs, and mantids. To survive, they rely on clever defences, like mimicry and camouflage. For example, to avoid being eaten, the female Common Mormon mimics the Common Rose or Crimson Rose, both of which are non-palatable to predators. Others disguise themselves as bird droppings, resemble leaves and broken twigs, or display eye-spots to deter threats.

Photo logging

We were exhausted by the time we returned to Gopikrishna’s base, a stone’s throw from the boundary of the Nagarahole reserve. But there was no time to rest. The real work was just beginning. After downloading more than 1,000 photographs from four cameras, the team began identifying each species and entering the data into an Excel sheet. Every photo was examined and cross-checked with reference books such as ‘Butterflies of India’ and ‘Butterflies of the Western Ghats’.

“There have been many times we thought we had captured a common butterfly, only to discover after zooming in that it was a jackpot — a lifer, meaning a species spotted for the first time,” Gopikrishna said. It took over an hour to complete the data logging from our two-day visit. There was no Eureka moment for us, and needless to say, I wasn’t taking home any gold coins. But Gopikrishna, Santhosh, and Anusha gave me golden memories I will never forget — like the hundreds of Common Emigrants fluttering around me in the backwaters, each one glowing like a yellow-green flower, the continuous alarm calls of chital and Hanuman langurs, the warnings about a lurking leopard or tiger, the rare sighting of a white-naped woodpecker, and a leopard emerging in the fading daylight!

Gopikrishna — along with his conservationist-wife Amulya — has been chasing butterflies for 15 years across the forests of Nagarahole, Bandipur, and Bhadra. His curiosity hasn’t faded in the slightest. “Their colourful wings, life cycles, migrations, the flowers they visit, their egg-laying tactics, mud puddling, courtship, camouflage, mimicry, and adaptation — it’s all fascinating,” he said.

From the tiny Oriental Grass Jewel, no bigger than a thumbnail with a 12 mm wingspan, to the majestic Southern Birdwing — Karnataka’s state butterfly and the largest in south India with a wingspan of up to 190 mm — the variety is astonishing. Some live just three or four days as adults; others migrate across regions, undergoing a full metamorphosis in about 10 weeks. Even their names are a delight: Forget Me Not, Monkey Puzzle, Yamfly, Sullied Sailor, Salmon Arab, Gaudy Baron, Southern Duffer, Club Beak, Grass Demon, Common Map, and Indian Cupid. The Nawab is named for its crown-like head seen at the caterpillar stage, the Apefly for its pupa that resembles an ape’s face, and the Albatross
after the seabird, reflecting its effortless flight and pale, often white, wings. 

Next time I visit Nagarahole, my cameras will be on the lookout for the Common Jezebel, Malabar Banded Peacock, Paris Peacock, Commander, Chestnut Angle, and Plum Judy. And the golden-listed butterflies on Gopikrishna’s wish list. He says the offer stands — until they are finally spotted.

State butterfly

The Southern Birdwing (Sahyadri Bahu Vanga in Kannada) is the state butterfly of Karnataka. It lost its title as India’s largest butterfly by 4 mm with the discovery of the Himalayan Golden Birdwing (wingspan: 194 mm) eight decades ago. Known for its gliding flight and bold black wings veined in yellow, it remains a rare
sight in the Western Ghats.