A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Catopsilia sp
with a wingspan of 60 mm this is a relatively large butterfly. The wings are a delicate pale green attached to a white body with pale eyes and with yellow clubs terminating the antennae.
This butterfly is fairly common and frequently arrives in numbers at damp spots and fresh cow pats along with the Brown-veined White and others. It sometimes migrates in large numbers. Catopsilia larvae are found on Cassia trees (legume subfamily Caesalpinoidae).
Compared with the picture of the African Migrant (Catopsilia florella) in our local Insect book (Picker, Griffiths & Weaving (2004) Field Guide to Insects of South Africa, 2nd Ed. Struik) the small brown spots on the underside of the hind wings appear to be absent in the above spotting and the eyes appear to be paler than those pictured in the field guide, hence I am unsure about the species.
2 Comments
Thanks for the reference Karen, didn't know the term mud puddling, but there's a lot of it going on out here in Botswana as well as 'dung puddling' if the butterflies can get in before the dung beetles dispose of everything.
I always find mud puddling such interesting behavior! There is more info here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud-puddlin...