Udaspes folus
In 3 days ~40% in a week ~70%
Ancistroides folus, the grass demon, is a small but prominent butterfly found in India & Nepal that belongs to the skipper family, Hesperiidae. It is regarded as an occasional pest of ginger and turmeric plants. Male. Upperside black, the basal half of both wings covered with minute yellowish scales, markings pure white, semi-hyaline. Forewing with a large white spot filling up the end of the cell, two similar conjoined spots outwardly below it extending from beneath vein 4 to the sub-median vein, hardly separated from each other by vein 2; four conjugated sub-apical spots, the uppermost one minute, two similar spots below them nearer the outer margin, a small spot between these and the two large conjoined spots. Hindwing with a very large medial white patch with its margin sinuous all round; abdominal area covered with yellowish hairs. Underside paler. Forewing with the markings as on the upperside. Hindwing with the white medial patch extending to the abdominal margin from near the costa to one-third above the anal angle, the extension suffused with grey, also extending narrowly to the outer margin, double blackish-brown lunular marks, within the white space at... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kanha National Park | 🇮🇳 India |
More parks will be added in future updates.
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kozhikode | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 2 | Tuen Mun | 🇨🇳 China | |
| 3 | Jabalpur | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 4 | Thrissur | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 5 | Coimbatore | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 6 | Thiruvananthapuram | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 7 | Mumbai | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 8 | Kochi | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 9 | Bengaluru | 🇮🇳 India | |
| 10 | Ponnani | 🇮🇳 India |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Grass Demon sighting in Chennai on a given day, based on 60 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 67th most-seen of the 376 insects we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 40%, and over a week to about 70%, if each day is a fresh chance.
May
In that month about 30% of wildlife watchers report a Grass Demon in Chennai on a given day, against about 10% in January–March, July–September and November, the lowest months. That is one of Chennai's driest months, with about 55 mm of rain against 290 mm in November.
Between 9 am and noon
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Grass Demon sightings with a recorded time, and nearly all of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
13th of 26
Of the 26 cities where we can rate Grass Demon sightings, Chennai ranks 13th at about 10%. The best odds are in Kozhikode (India, about 20%), Tuen Mun (China, about 20%) and Jabalpur (India, about 20%).
Same family: Hesperiidae
The closest relatives of the Grass Demon that you can see in Chennai (family Hesperiidae, Skippers) are Parnara naso (about 30%), Common Banded Awl (about 20%) and Indian Palm Bob (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Grass Demon is recorded against all the insects logged in Chennai (60 verified sightings), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
