Great Orange Tip

Description:

Pieridae; Pierinae; Hebomoia glaucippe boholensis Fruhstorfer 1911. This specimen is a male, according to pictures in https://philippinelepidopt.wixsite.com/b...

Habitat:

This Great Orange Tip was spotted early in the morning (around 8:30 a.m.) visiting a hedgerow of Dwarf Santan (Ixora coccinea) in our front yard. It stayed there for around 10 minutes, sipping here and there along the length of the hedge. Then it flew off over the wall and disappeared. I am reasonably sure that it did not return that day. The next morning, at around 10:00 a.m. I noticed another Great Orange Tip visiting the same hedgerow. So I took some more pictures. It was only that evening, when I was sorting out my photos, that I realised it was not another butterfly. It was the same one. By comparing the pictures, it can be seen that the slight damages to the wings is identical in both sets of photos. Does this mean that butterflies remember the spots they like? Or is it just a matter of following the scent of a particular plant. I don't think it can be the latter because we have several Dwarf Santans here and it studiously ignored all but one. Food for thought.

Notes:

So that anyone (who might be interested in my suggestion that butterflies can remember particular plants) can compare the specimen above with the one I pictured the following day, I will upload another spotting immediately after this one, showing the next day's photos. Look at the slight damage to the wing outer margins.