Introducing the Butterflies of Bhutan

This being my first post after the creation of this Blog dedicated to the Butterflies and Insects of Bhutan, I would like to take the advantage of my expected readers to introduce the blog and at the same time the butterflies and insects of Bhutan.
Introductory Posts:
In coming up with this Blog, I intend to celebrate the wonderful small flying jewels of Nature, call it "Chimla or Thibla" these small flying creatures have always been around us and yet we notice it so little. Give it a little effort this time and you will see it everywhere.

As an introduction, i will write few lines about butterflies, but this blog hereafter will mostly be a photographic blog for butterflies of and occasionally some insects from Bhutan, either for identification by experts or for you to appreciate its beauty.

You see butterflies only certain seasons of the year, mostly the flowering season. To add to the beauty of flowers, you have butterflies visiting them.
Among the insects, butterflies and moths come under a large Group called Lepidoptera, which means "scaly wings". These two similar insects differ from other insects in having two pairs of membranous wings which have scales on it. We all as a child must have noticed that the scales come onto our fingers when we tried to catch them.
Moths and Butterflies differ in many aspects, but the most easiest way to differentiate between the two is by looking at the antennae. While butterflies usually have a slender club shaped or hooked antennae tip, moths have very thin or a pair of feathery antennae.
Moths outnumber butterflies in being around 10 times more in number while butterflies are estimated to be about 18,000 species in the world. <br>
Bhutan should be having more than a thousand butterflies. Efforts are on to know the exact number of butterflies species in Bhutan. This blog aspires to record all the species in Bhutan one fine day.

Classification:
Presently, butterflies are classified into two superfamilies viz. Hesperiodea (The Skipper butterflies which can be easily mistaken as a moth by an untrained eye) and Papilionoidea (which includes the 'true' butterflies. Hesperiodea consists of a single family of Hesperiidae which includes all the Skippers, while Papilionoidea consisits of four families viz

1. Papilionidea (The Swallowtails)
2. Pieridae (The Whites and Yellows)
3. Nymphalidae (The Brush-footed butterflies) and
4. Lycaenidae (The Blues)

"Happy Blogging"





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