Dear Butterfly Lovers,
Vannakkam [Greetings]. Pattampoochi means Butterfly in Tamil. It was in our thoughts for quite sometime to
bring out a Newsletter, especially focusing on the state of Tamil Nadu. We hope you will welcome the idea as
much as we did in the making and like the contents of the newsletter too. One of the main purposes of the
Newsletter is to put on record the happenings and observations, on butterflies, in the state of Tamil Nadu for
the long term benefits on our understanding of the winged beauties.
This is not a scientifically driven attempt but just a communication among butterfly enthusiasts. Hence, there
may be certain points which are beyond our understanding scope and we might have erred in our judgement.
Please do correct us, if you see any of them here and we shall be happy to listen.
In the first and current issue, we have attempted to list Butterfly checklist for the state. We have reasoned out
leaving some species and added some. This checklist will be constantly monitored and will be updated as and
when it becomes important. We have also provided the results of re-validation exercise, we have taken a few
years back and we are happy 92% of target species have been ticked off. However, with just the morphological
data in hand, identifying Bushbrowns, Sailers, Darts and Swifts are difficult many a time and we are confidant a
few more species will be added with more knowledge gained on them. Another interesting observation to
share is the migration of Nymphalidae and Pieridae species. It was with great disappointment to put on record
that the Nymphalidae butterflies did not take on the scale that we witnessed before in their migration journey.
While we are yet to consider ourselves qualified to review a book, we have attempted to drive an impact on
our understanding for the state from the new BNHS field guide released recently. A few of our members are
actively involved in observing the life cycle of butterflies and we have shared one such life cycle (of a rare Yp-
thima striata) in this issue. The rest of the sections are for the fun part.
Many of the data and observations that is used in arriving some meaningful conclusion here is based on active
involvement of each and every members of the Tamil Nadu Butterfly Society of past and present and all mem-
bers of our Facebook forum. We owe every one of them a great deal. And, please do send us your feedback on
this newsletter issue, by writing to [email protected]
Editorial Team
Tamil Nadu Butterfly Society
Pattampoochi– A quarterly magazine of
Tamil Nadu Butterfly Society
Wings 1 Veins 1
Jan– Mar 2017. Issued on 01.01.2017
Issued from Coimbatore, TN
For Private Circulation Only. Copy right is
with TNBS. Please write to us for getting
permission to use any of the contents
Editor: A Pavendhan
Editorial Team: Bala Krishnan, Gopal
Krishnan, Nishanth CV, Pradeep Kumar PB,
Theivaprakasham H , Vishwa Nathan
3