It is the dream of every butterfly lover in India to visit Arunachal Pradesh. More than 900 species of the 1300 odd species reported from India are found in North East India. Obviously, when I got the chance to go there I did not turn down the opportunity of visiting Namdapha sanctuary in the Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh.

North East India is geographically important. It is the confluence of three bio-geographical sub regions viz. Indian, Oriental and Indo Malayan. Thus, the flora and fauna of all three sub-regions have their representatives in NE India. Namdapha sanctuary is the easternmost sanctuary of the country and is highly diverse in terms of flora and fauna. The forest is typical evergreen tropical rain forest with warm and humid climate. Normally, the rains start in March but this time they were late. Due to water shortage, the butterflies were gathering on wet soil for puddling. This benefited us; we saw many species together on the soil. The floral diversity was so high that I virtually could not identify all the plant species. Though it was a dry season, there were a few muddy spots on the Vijaynagar road where butterflies had congregated.

We were a team of five enthusiasts viz. Nelson Rodrigues and myself from Mumbai, Arjan Basuroy and Rudraprasad Das from Kolkata, Ujjal Ghosh from Jaldhapara. We stayed at Deban guest house and trekked to many nearby places. Our first day species count was almost 120 in the morning session. During subsequent days, we were adding almost 15 new species per day apart from the previous day’s sightings.

During our fortnight’s stay, we saw a staggering 303 species of butterflies. This is probably the longest list of species for Namdapha. Some uncommon or rare species were spotted in plenty. At this time swallowtails were plenty in number. We counted 33 species of them. Common birdwing (Troides Helena), White dragontail (Lamproptera curius), Green dragontail (L. megus), Four bar swordtail (Graphium agetes), Tawny mime (Chilasa agestor), Glassy bluebottle (Graphium cloatnhus) and many species of Windmills Atrophaneura etc. were present in plenty on the wet soil. Species like Freak (Callinaga buddha) was initially neglected by us as some blue tiger moth; Yellow Tinsel (Catapeocilma subochrea), Panther (Neurosigma siva) which was fairly common on wet soil, three species of Archdukes Lexias sp., Pale green sailer (Neptis zaida), which don’t show any green tinge on it, beautiful Golden Emperor (Dilipa morgiana), elegant Yellow Kaiser (Penthema lisarda), graceful White commodore (Parasarpa dudu), rare Forest (Taraka hamada) and Pointed Pierrot (Tarucus indica) to name a few that were seen. We are still identifying few sailers Neptis and sergeants Athyma, which are showing some confusing patterns. It was difficult to identify the skippers. So we photographed whatever we could and identified them back at the camp.

Apart from butterflies, we saw mammals like Malayan giant squirrel, Giant flying squirrel, Hoary bellied squirrel, Orange bellied squirrel, Slow Loris, Hollock, Capped langur, Stump tailed macaque, Serow etc.

I would suspect that the butterfly species of Namdapha would easily cross 600 mark. Some parts of the park are so rugged and remote that visitors rarely frequent them. Places beyond Haldibari, Bubulia, and core area need to be explored. The 130 km long Vijaynagar road itself will probably reveal many rare butterfly species.

The checklist for this trip report can be found here.

Dr. Amol Patwardhan is an entomologist based in Thane and an avid nature lover and wildlife photographer. You can find his blog here.