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Evening Brown Butterfly - Melanitis leda bankia
FAMILY NYMPHALIDAE
- This page contains information and pictures about Evening Brown Butterflies in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Wingspan : 80mm, winter colour form.
- The Evening Brown butterflies can be seen flying in the bush during evening before complete darkness. They are common in Brisbane. In the day time they rest on the ground amongst dry leaves, and can hardly be seen unless disturbed. They become active in the late afternoon. During the day when we passing through dense vegetations, if there are some large brown insects flying away and rest a few meters away, most likely they are the Evening Brown butterflies.
- Winter form, more eyespots Summer form, more eyespots.
- The butterflies are brown in colour and looks like a dead leaf. The underside wings are marked with the eyespots pattern, which confuse the predators not to attack the butterfly body. This butterfly has two colour forms. In winter they have less eyespots pattern on the bottom side of their wings and darker in colour.
The butterflies lay their eggs on the leaf of tall grass, which is the food of their caterpillars. They feed on different types of grass, including Kangaroo Grass Themeda australis and rice plants. They are pest to the rice farmer.
The Evening Brown caterpillar body is green with white spots. There are a pair of dark red horns on its dark green head, and a pair of smaller green horns on its tail.
The Evening Brown caterpillar lives on the underneath of the grass and pupate there too. A few hours before pupating, it turn into a 'J' shape. The pupa is green in colour. It hangs by silk from the grass. They stay motionless as pupa for about 10 days, then the adult butterfly emerge from the pupa.
The above picture shows a Evening Brown is just coming out from its pupa. The butterfly is pumping blood into its wings to extend them. It has to waits for its wings to become hard before it can fly. This may take a few hours. However, not all pupae will turn into butterflies, they may be parasited by wasps or Tachnid Flies and never turn into a butterfly.
The Evening Brown flies to find its partner and start their new life cycle.
Above picture shows the Evening Brown rested on the ground. The picture was taken during mid winter. The Evening Browns are still active in Brisbane winter. Sometimes they are the only large insects we saw during mid-winter bush-walking. Their talent of activeness in cool evening may help them to cope with the cold winter as well.
Pupa Location
The Evening Brown Butterfly pupa is always found hanging under the long grass. They are covered by dense vegetations and hard to be noticed.
Few years ago we found our first Evening Brown pupa. It was hiding in the grasses. When we took the pictures we thought we are very lucky because the sun light just passed all the grasses and shining onto the pupa, which gave the perfect lighting for the photo.
Later we found another Evening Brown Pupa and found that our luck was still there. The pupa was shine directly by the afternoon sun light. A pupa photo with good lighting was just easy to take.
Then we found that almost all Evening Brown Pupa were shined by the afternoon sun light. We started to realized that this could not be our luck. It could be the Evening Brown Caterpillars had carefully chosen their pupa position.
