Common Birdwing

About the Common Birdwing

Troides helena, the common birdwing, is a butterfly belonging to the family Papilionidae. It is often found in the wildlife trade due to its popularity with butterfly collectors. The butterfly has seventeen subspecies. The description of the commonest subspecies of the butterfly in India, T. h. cerberus Felder, is given below:

Upperside of forewings are rich velvety black with adnervular pale streaks on either side of the veins beyond the cell. The cilia is short, black, alternated with pale buffy white in the middle of the interspaces. Hindwing: the abdominal fold, the apical half obliquely of interspace 1, the termen broadly, the base of the cell and the costal area up to and including the basal half of interspace 7 velvety black, the rest of the wing rich silky yellow; the veins prominently but narrowly black; the inner margin of the terminal black border produced inwards into prominent cone-shaped markings in the interspaces.

All specimens have one or more postdiscal black spots in the interspaces, but never a complete series; in interspace 2 and sometimes also in interspace 3 these spots coalesce with the cone-shaped projections of the terminal black... Wikipedia →