Heliophorus ila matsumurae

These Common Bluebottles (Graphium sarpedon connectens) are often seen at the riverside.

With many species their beauty is doubled with an open/close view.

Like this Leopard Spot (Symbrenthia hypselis scatinia)

Or top and side like this Silk Net or Common Mapwing (Cyrestis thyodamas formosana)

Or wet season and dry season like this pair of Common Evening Brown (Melanitis leda)

Peacock Eye or Peacock Pansy (Junonia almana)

Yellow Three Stripe or Common Jester (Symbrenthia liaea formosanus)

Chocolate Pansy (Junonia iphita)

Bean Ring (Neptis hylas luculenta)

This lovely lady was taken on the Batongguan trail. Check out her pair of hearts. (Abisara burnii etymander – female)

This family of butterfly are really hard to catch. They seem to be always on the wing and never wait around long enough for a picture. A shame really as they are very large and plentiful in the hills.

Papilio nephelus chaonulus

Red Helen (Papilio helenus fortunius)

Common Mormon (Papilio polytes pasikrates)

While on Lanyu island we spotted this giant Idea leuconoe clara

Common Jay (Graphium doson postianus)

Maybe an Yellow Coaster ( Acraea issoria formosana? )

Asian Swallowtail (Papilio xuthus koxinga) (male)

Athyma selenophora laela

Blue Tiger (Tirumala limniace)

Ceylon Blue Glassy Tiger (Ideopsis similis)

Plain Tiger (Danaus chrysippus)

These Cabbage White (Pieris rapae crucivora) are very common.

Dark-banded Bushbrown (Mycalesis mineus)

Striped Blue Crow (Euploea mulciber barsine)

A very straggly looking Great Egg-fly (Hypolimnas bolina kezia)

An amazing Blue Eye or Blue Pansy (Junonia orithya) we recently spotted on the Southern cross island highway.

These tiny ones are very common on grass areas. (Zizeeria maha okinawana?)

And here are a bunch that I just can’t name.

Perhaps just some of the 130 species that my reference book of 270 doesn’t hold.

For all the cement, roads and insecticide spray it is perhaps surprising that there are still so many butterflies left to photograph.

If you are looking for a a good reference book on Taiwan butterflies try the useful Books from Taiwan website.
For more great Taiwan butterfly photos visit Todd’s The Daily Bubble Tea fantastic collection.

Mark at Stop Hushan Dam also has a huge range of well catalogued butterflies from the Huben-Hushan area.
Wikipedia’s List of Taiwan Butterflies provides a great on-line reference.
Of course you can also visit Shan Ding Lu’s Insect photo album. Now upgraded to support Cooliris photo wall browsing support.

Let me know if I have mislabled something or you can help identify the few above.

Out in the country side or mountains are the best place to find them. But you can also discover them in the city parks and household streets too. Like the giant grasshopper, wasp moth,weevil and water skimmer below.

Around dusk you are often drowned out by the piercing cicadas as they siren through the trees.

There are lots of different dragonflies too. My favourite is the red winged one but the big blue and red/black river ones are pretty special too.

Beetles are everywhere. All shapes, colours and sizes.

And lots of interesting caterpillars as well.

And here is an incredibly long earthworm we discovered on a rainy mountain road past Sandimen just recently. (I know. Earthworms aren’t insects!)

If you are interested in Taiwan insects here are some links you might enjoy.

• A range of interesting reference book at the useful Books from Taiwan
• An incredible photo collection of the huge variety of Insects in Taiwan
• The Daily Bubble Tea’s growing butterfly collection
• My small collection of insect in the photo gallery. It contains lots of butterflies that I skipped for this post.

If you click on any picture you should see a slide show of all the pictures in full resolution.

It is that time of year when the house starts to leak, leather boots and food stains go mouldy and everyone starts looking for any cool relief available.

The first rain also brought the recently harvested rice field adjacent to us to life with the sound of frogs. This evening there were hundreds of them all singing in the new wet season. The kids were very excited to put on gum-boots and headlamps and do a bit of frog spotting between rain showers.

Here is one frog going through the croaking motions.

The sound of all those frogs was really wonderful. Here you can see the vibrations in the surrounding water as he croaks away.

And of course there were other slimmies and crawlies to discover as well.

Not much survives the blanket spraying practised on the agricultural lands. There are few really interesting insects in and around our street. But if you move away from the betel nut groves and rice fields into the forests in the mountains you are overwhelmed with the range insects.

There has recently been a beetle craze amongst children with a good specimen worth quite a bit for the keen collector, or persuadable parent. We acquired a discounted 5 legged beetle and managed to keep him alive for a good couple of months. We found this vicious looking beetle in a stream in the mountains recently.

Taiwan is rightly famous for the huge range of butterflies. You see them everywhere you go. Big, small and very colourful. They don’t hang around and are difficult subjects to photograph.

Caterpillars are a little less mobile, but better camouflaged and require a sharper eye to find.

This bee was quite the opposite; it didn’t want to leave my thumb.

And this spider is the size of a hand-span at least.

Keep an eye on the Insects album as I add every creeping, crawling or flying insect that stays still long enough.

If you are interested in a good reference book on the butterflies in Taiwan have a look at Books from Taiwan.