Nature’s Beautiful Lesson in Becoming
Common Jezebel, Blue Mormon, Crimson Rose, Painted Lady, Peacock Pansy, Common Nawab, Great EggFly, Orange Oakleaf, Common Emigrant, Wanderer, Glassy Tiger… All beautiful sounding names for butterflies with glorious sounding vocabulary…! Butterflies seem to have been given names not merely for identification but with poetic parlances. Some names describe colour or pattern, others their behaviour, shape, habitat or resemblance to something familiar. That’s indeed fancy…
The Peacock Pansy wears eyespots like a peacock’s tail, hence the name, the Blue Mormon carries a name borrowed from the Mormon swallowtail group. The Common Jezebel is named for its striking, almost flamboyant appearance. Even “butterfly” itself has an intriguing history. The English word goes back to Old English butterfleoge, although its precise origin remains debated among etymologists. Linguistic records prove that the word is incredibly old, tracing back to at least the year 700 AD. It is a straightforward compound of the words “butter” and “fly”. Several theories linking it to the yellow colour of some butterflies, butter, or old folklore. Whatever the etymology, I find the names irresistible and they are Nature’s little thesaurus of colour, character and imagination.I still recall how often I used the thesaurus in the 1980s to energise my articles before submitting various newspaper and magazines. Particularly my column called “Nature Notes” in the 1980s published in three editions of Indian Express.
Crimson Rose is a velvety-black swallowtail flashing crisp white wing-spots and fiery crimson-red splashes along its hindwings, a living jewel of Indias open country 
Common Jay is a sleek butterfly with dark, velvety wings splashed with luminous turquoise-blue windows, poised like a tiny jewel against the green foliage 
The large Common Lime Butterfly has a striking mosaic of dark brown or black background with scattered cream-to-yellow spots 
Common Emigrant is a delicate lemon-yellow wanderer sipping nectar from vibrant Lantana blooms, its sunlit wings glowing like a fleeting spark of summer 
Common Jezebel one of the most beautiful Butterly with attractive and contrasting hues in the wings to warn predators of its toxicity 
Lemon Pansy is a brown-winged beauty, its vivid blue-and-orange eyespots gleaming against the dusty brown wing patterns 
The Peacock Pansy butterfly in its bright wet-season avatar with Glowing orange colour and prominent dark eyespots that confuse predators
PHOTOs CopyRight by N.Shiva Kumar
My own fascination with Butterflies began decades ago, when I was studying at Nizam College in Hyderabad. There were no smartphones then, no instant identification apps and certainly no social media groups to tell me what had just fluttered past. I had no field guide either. I watched, wondered and tried to remember. In those days I even hand-reared caterpillars in our lush garden, fascinated by the mysterious little creatures chewing their way through leaves and leaving behind those unmistakable pellets of frass [little dung] that looked like tiny dynamites. I was hooked for life.
Today, whenever I see a Butterfly, I am reminded that the pretty creature before me is only the final act of an extraordinary drama.That drama is now unfolding across India in thousands of gardens, forests, campuses, farms and neighbourhoods as Big Butterfly Month (BBM). An exceptional exercise by citizens science enthusiasts across the country.SOHAIL MADAN an experienced ecologist and Butterflyspecialistsays “What began in 2017 as Delhi Butterfly Month expanded to the Delhi-NCR region, then to other states, and went pan-India in 2020. State-wide counts followed in 2021 and 2022 saw more than 20,000 butterflies recorded. Their habitats became a formal focus in 2023 and a BBM app arrived in 2024. The 2025 edition pushed nationwide Butterflywalks, talks and counts to a wider audience. This year’s Big Butterfly Month (BBM) 2026 is once again inviting everyonefrom expert lepidopterists and seasoned naturalists to schoolchildren and casual photographersto talk, walk, watch, record and, ultimately, protect these flying jewels.
More importantly, BBM is steadily evolving beyond a celebration of pretty wings into serious citizen science. The BBM records currently reports more than 120000 butterflies counted, 500-plus checklists submitted, 1000 plus citizen scientists involved, and 1,700 events engaging more than 8,000 participants. These are live, accumulating figures rather than a final annual tally, so the numbers will continue to change as September progresses into October and even November.
Because September does not mark the end of Butterfly watching or counting. Butterflies are around us all year only the number varies. BBM merely provides a concentrated nationwide push to observe and document them. The monsoon, however, brings a spectacular flush of vegetation, flowers and fresh growth, creating an abundance of food and shelter for butterflies. The different life stages from egg and caterpillar to pupa and adult. In that sense, the fluttering spectacle of a tiny egg is not just about colourful wings but it is a seasonal window into the health and richness of our living landscapes.
Hyderabad, too, has been getting into the act. Butterfly walks have been organised across Telangana in places such as University of Hyderabad campus, KBR National Park, Sanjeevaiah Park, ICRISAT, Narsapur, Vikarabad, Warangal etc. with enthusiasts photographing and documenting species even with just a cellphone. Hyderabad’s BBM projects on iNaturalist have also created a continuing record of Butterfly observations rather than leaving individual sightings as isolated photographs.The value of BBM, however, lies beyond the excitement of ticking off another species.
PHOTOs CopyRight by Sandhya
Dr.Chitra Shankar an entomological professional who conducted a butterfly walk says “Butterflies are far more than splashes of colour. They are sensitive indicators of the health of our environment. Their dependence on specific host and nectar plants makes them vulnerable to habitat loss, pesticides and changing land use. A simple Butterfly walk can therefore become a lesson in biodiversity, turning ordinary observers into citizen scientists. Every photograph, tagged with its date and location on to iNaturalist, can add to valuable scientific records. Initiatives like BBM bring people closer to nature while generating data that researchers can use. Conservation begins with noticing and once we see what lives around us, we begin to value and protect their habitats that sustain it.” Akbar a Naturalist from WWF-Hyderabad had organised the two-hour walkathon at Sanjeevaiah park with Dr.Chitra.
Karishma on her first Butterfly walk says joyfully “I had seen butterflies before, but never really looked at them with precision. This walk made me pause, admire their colours and quietly capture their fleeting fluttering beauties on my phone.”After his first walk Anurag exclaims “Butterflies turned out to be tiny flying artworks…! Watching them zip-zap zoom around and trying to lock those magical moments on my phone was simply captivating.”The Butterfly Walk at University of Hyderabad was led by ecologist Arun Vasireddy, engaged 37 students and despite a drizzle rain participants recorded 35 Butterfly species in about two hours.
For me, the Butterfly is one of Nature’s most eloquent teachers of metamorphosis. It begins life as a tiny egg, sometimes scarcely larger than a pinhead. What emerges is not a miniature Butterflybut a caterpillar, wingless, often awkward-looking and seemingly devoid of the elegance we associate with the adult. Its mission is simple eat, grow and moult, sometimes increasing many times in size.
Then comes the astonishing transformation. The caterpillar stops feeding, finds a suitable place and enters the chrysalis. From outside it may appear lifeless; within, however, a remarkable biological reorganisation is under way. The crawling, leaf-eating larva is transformed into an adult with wings, antennae and an entirely different body plan.Four fascinating stages, egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and Butterfly with four identities, yet one continuous life.
That is why I see the Butterfly as far more than a pretty garden fluttering ornament. Its metamorphosis is a lesson in adaptation, resilience and renewal. Yet its beauty should not blind us to its vulnerability. Every stage of its life is exposed to predators, parasites, disease, extreme weather and habitat destruction.
Pretty butterflies that survive one of Nature’s most extraordinary transformations can still be undone by the destruction of the world it depends upon. If the Butterfly disappears from our gardens, forests and fields, we will have lost more than colour in the air but we will have lost one of Nature’s clearest warnings that a damaged environment ultimately damages every form of life within world-wide-web of life…
We are busy destroying the very botanical wealth upon which butterflies depend. A Butterfly cannot survive merely because we plant a few ornamental flowers in a landscaped park. It needs the right host plants for its caterpillars, nectar plants for adults, shelter, sunlight, leaf litter and an ecological mosaic that allows its entire life cycle to function. Studies from India have shown that Butterfly communities differ markedly between habitats and that specialist species can depend heavily on particular natural or traditionally managed habitats.
Yet our idea of “development” too often means flattening scrublands, replacing indigenous vegetation with fashionable ornamentals, clearing old trees, concreting open spaces, manicuring grasslands and treating every untidy patch of native vegetation as wasteland. We call it development but I sometimes wonder whether destruction dressed up as development would be the more honest description.
Every bulldozed patch of indigenous vegetation may take away not just a flower but a caterpillar’s food plant, a butterfly’s breeding site and an entire miniature ecological chain.India’s Butterfly wealth is immense. A recent government-supported guide puts the country’s Butterfly total at more than 1,500 species, while the Zoological Survey of India’s 2024 illustrated guide listed 1,504 Butterfly species within India’s Lepidoptera diversity framework. In 2024, for instance, Kaziranga alone was reported to harbour more than 446 Butterfly species, underscoring how extraordinary India’s regional diversity can be.
But knowing how many species exist is only the beginning. What we urgently need to know is where they are, how frequently they occur and whether their populations are increasing, declining or disappearing locally.This is where BBM could become especially important.For years, Butterfly observations have been scattered across notebooks, field guides, photographic collections, social-media posts, specialist surveys and individual enthusiasts. BBM is attempting to bring this enormous grassroots enthusiasm into a common citizen-science framework. Observations can be submitted through the BBM platform, iNaturalist and the India Biodiversity Portal, creating datasets that can eventually be compared across districts, habitats and years.
That qualification is important. A rise in recorded butterflies may mean more butterflies or simply more people looking for them. A fall may mean fewer butterflies or fewer observers. But repeated, standardised counts across the same places and seasons can gradually turn scattered observations into something far more powerful. A national baseline against which future change can be measured. That, to me, is the real promise of Big Butterfly Month.
The photograph I take during the various Butterfly walks may be aesthetically pleasing. The species I identify may give me a little thrill. But when thousands of such observations are assembled, checked and repeated year after year, they become more than photographs. They become a strong statement of evidence. And perhaps that is the most beautiful transformation of all.
A butterfly begins as an almost invisible egg, spends its youth as a voracious caterpillar, disappears into a chrysalis and emerges with wings. Now, through BBM, our individual sightings can undergo their own metamorphosis, from a fleeting encounter in a Hyderabad park or Himalayan Forest into a collective national record of change.I f the record rises, we learn where butterflies are thriving.If it falls, we have a warning. Either way, the Butterfly is speaking softly… We only have to stop, look and hear their hearsay.
Text & Photographs
– N.Shiva Kumar
