a butterfly trying hot chilli.

 

  

  

  

  

  

Junonia almana javana (Peacock Pansy)

I never see this butterfly in our garden before. Luck was with us last month when a beautiful  Papilio helenus swallowtail paid us a visit, perched at the tip of lemon plant long enough for a snap. But the encounter with peacock pansy was in a different setting. It was almost 7.00pm. The sun was enjoying the last half an hour, showering golden rays.  It was at that moment that I noticed this beautiful butterfly resting on chili leaf. This time, peacock pansy stay long enough for multiple shots. They both are hot, peacock pansy and chili itself.

Google helped me  for identification. A peacock is a beautiful bird, and a peacock pansy is equally beautiful in the world of butterflies. I hope it will return, bringing her  friends as well....

~bangchik

Putrajaya, Malaysia.

source of reference: Butterflies of Malaysia,

Info

from google search

• Upperside rich orange-yellow. Fore wing with a pale dusky and a much darker short transverse bar with lateral jet-black marginal lines across cell, another somewhat similar bar defining the discocellulars ; costal margin, an inner and an outer subterminal line, and a terminal line dusky black; a large minutely white-centred ocellus with an inner slender and outer black ring on disc in interspace 2; two similar but smaller geminate subapical ocelli with an obscure pale spot above them and a short oblique bar connecting them to the black on the costa. Hind wing: a small minutely white-centred and very slenderly black-ringed discal ocellus in interspace 2, with a very much larger pale yellow and black-ringed ocellus above it spreading over interspaces 4, 5 and 6, the centre of this ocellus inwardly brownish orange, outwardly bluish black, with two minute white spots in vertical order between the two colours ; finally postdiscal subterminal and terminal black sinuous lines.

• Underside ochraceous brown, very variable. In most specimens the ceil of the fore wing is crossed by three dark sinuous bands, the outermost along the discocellulars ; these are very faint in some ; both fore and hind wings crossed by a basal and a discal pale sinuous line, the latter margined outwardly by a dark shade, which is traversed by an obscure somewhat obsolescent row of dark spots, and outwardly bounded by a subterminal sinuous line, the dark shade in many cases spreading on the fore wing to the terminal edge of the wing ; on the hind wing the subterminal line meets the discal in an acute angle at the tornus. Antennae dark brown; head, thorax and abdomen more or less orange-brown ; paler beneath.

^{~ bangchik and kakdah}

  ^{Putrajaya, MALAYSIA}