Dark Grass Blue

When the word butterfly is mentioned, the first thing that comes to my mind is a colourful flying fairy in my garden. But there are many inconspicuous butterflies too. For instance this Dark Grass Blue (  Zizeeria karsandra ) which is not only small, but also has a drab brown colour,

Most of the time these butterflies blend in beautifully with the surrounding foliage. Its only during flight that you notice one of these. It has a ground level flight and loves grassy patches.

Common Hedge Blue

One of the many tiny butterflies that have made our garden their abode is this Common Hedge Blue  (Acytolepis puspa ). 

October has been a potpourri of days when it comes to weather. We had days with heavy rains and days which were hot and dry.  This Hedge blue, loves hot weather and I spotted it only on sunny days.
It is a common indian butterfly and was first described by Thomas Horsfield  an Americam Physician and naturalist in the early 1800's.

Angled Pierrot

In field, I struggle to quickly differentiate the butterfly I posted in the previous post (Common Pierrot) and the one I am posting today, the Angled Pierrot (Caleta caleta). Check the spots closely between this and previous post to notice the difference.

This butterfly prefers places with heavy rainfall and is seen in abundant numbers during rains. 

Common Pierrot

The Common Pierrot ( Castalius rosimon) like its name suggests is another common butterfly in our garden. Keeps close to the ground and is pretty fearless of me. I routinely had Common Pierrot's sitting on plants right next to my feet and some times on my tripod too! 

This is one butterfly with whom I can comfortably use my macro lens.  Fond of basking in the sun, puddles of mud and visiting animal droppings.

If you closely see the hind wing, you will notice a tiny white tipped black tail that this butterfly has, a common feature of many Pierrot's.

Lime Blue

The sixth butterfly in the series is the tiny Lime Blue ( Chilades lajus ). We have many of these and when the sun is at the right angle, they look like little flash of light everywhere. 

One of the thing that I have realised over the last few weeks is that I have been mostly using a telephoto lens to photograph the butterflies. Most of the books and websites on butterfly and insect photography generally recommend a dedicated macro lens for this kind of photography. But I found more joy with a telephoto lens rather than a macro lens.

With a macro lens, one can achieve beautiful closeups in never before seen viewpoints. Lovely eyes and scary mandibles all look beautiful. But what I enjoy is, photographing  the insect interacting with its environment. The way it flies, its graceful poise and its sometimes funny acrobatics all make a lovely image to me. It also gives me a chance to sit by at a distance and have photographs without stressing or scaring anything off. All this is possible with a telephoto, nicely fixed up on a tripod.

Hence I only use my macro lens to photograph really tiny insects or small butterflies and moths. Else 400mm is mostly my workhorse.