Common Mormon

The second butterfly in the series is Papilio polytes a.k.a Common Mormon. The females of this species occur in three forms. The form featured here is the 'romulus,' in which the butterfly imitates the 'Crimson Rose'

 This is a pretty common butterfly, but takes a bit of getting used to in the field, to separate it from the 'rose' species. One thing I noticed when photographing these butterflies was that the females fly quite slow and leisurely, while the males seem to be in some hurry. Hence I managed to photograph a few females during flight, but photographing a male even perched turned out to be quite a challenge.

One of the favourite flowers of these butterflies is the Lanterna flowers featured above.

Amazingly they seem to prefer the wild variety, giving the purple, yellow and white lanterna in our garden a complete miss.

The fast flying male, Common Mormon is featured above.