Dear Krushnamegh and Animish,
congratulations. Again, wish you had the specimen, so it would be possible to
work out its proper generic affiliations. However, this is not about my
constant wail for specimens, but to point out to Krushnamegh that "Curio
Oakblue" might not be gramatically correct. Do consider "Curious Oakblue".
On Sat, 14 Aug 2010 20:46:08 +0530 wrote
>
Hi Group,
Indeed this is good news for all of us.
My trip 2008 Trip to Arunachal Pradesh was very eventful. We (Myself and
Shasank Dalvi)
were stuck at Nameri Eco Camp for more than a week due to heavy cloudburst in
Arunachal. The road from Bhalunkpong to Tenga was jammed due to heavy
landslides which was finally removed by military. On our way to Eaglenest we
could count more than 50 Landslides in a stretch of 86 Kms.
The Insect and Bird activity was very low as compare to my earlier trip to this
place in 2007. We reasoned it to be the torrential rains which had swept the
entire forest floor. Heavy rains are not new to this place but this was real
bad. In our trip we noticed forest activity was good in low altitude as
compared to the mountains.
On our way back, one sunny afternoon of 12th Nov 2008, I saw a brown coloured
butterfly mud puddling at Lama Camp with unusual twisting at it rear wings. I
could manage to take few shot before it disappeared.
Thank to KK for taking time out of his busy schedule and identifying it. Below
are his comment:
the name of your species is
Arhopala curiosa, for which i have coined the english name, Curio
Oakblue. i just made its entry in my Catalog of Indian
Butterflies:
"E. Himalaya. Previously known only from a single female
(type specimen), which was collected from Dokyong La, Bhutan, at
3,000m asl on 1927/03/25 by F. M. Bailey (Evans 1957). Recently, a
specimen was photographed mud-puddling at the Lama Camp (27º08.48'N
& 92º27.23'E; 2,350m asl) in Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in W.
ArunachalPradesh, adjacent to Bhutan, in the second week of Nov.
2008, by Animish Mandrekar. This seems to be the only other record
known of the species. This species has an unusual wing shape for an
Arhopala and d'Abrera (1986) has remarked that it looks rather
similar to members of Mahathala."
Happy Butterflying,
--
Animish Mandrekar
Address: 304, Dattatray Bhavan,
Eksar Road, Borivli (West),
Mumbai-400 103
Tel.: (022) 28914101
Email: [email protected]
--
Enjoy
