Meandrusa payeni
In 3 days ~50% in a week ~80%
Meandrusa payeni, the yellow gorgon, is a species of swallowtail found in parts of South Asia and Southeast Asia. It belongs to the hooked swallowtails genus, Meandrusa, of the family Papilionidae. It is also called the outlet sword or the sickle.
Upperside bright ochraceous, with a darker shade towards the base of the wings. Forewing: two or three spots obliquely across the cell, a larger spot at its upper apex, the costal margin from base (the collar broadened towards the apex), and the terminal margin very broadly, dark brown; on the inner side of this broad brown terminal edging there is a transverse incomplete discal series of dark brown spots, followed by an irregular transverse series of brown lunules, both these merge anteriorly and posteriorly into the brown on the termen; lastly superposed on the brown terminal edging is a more or less complete, transverse, subterminal series of lunules of the ochraceous ground colour, reduced in some specimens to only two or three lunules above the tornus. Hindwing: terminal half or more dark brown, with an inner postdiscal and an outer subterminal series of more or less lunular spots of the ochraceous ground... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cuc Phuong National Park | 🇻🇳 Vietnam |
More parks will be added in future updates.
Possible
About 20% of wildlife watchers report a Yellow Gorgon sighting in Cuc Phuong National Park on a given day, based on 9 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 108th most-seen of the 126 insects we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 50%, and over a week to about 80%, if each day is a fresh chance.
June
In that month about 60% of wildlife watchers report a Yellow Gorgon in Cuc Phuong National Park on a given day, against under 5% in July to May, the lowest months.
Between 10 am and 1 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Yellow Gorgon sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Cuc Phuong National Park, in our data
Cuc Phuong National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Yellow Gorgon sightings: about 20% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same family: Papilionidae
The closest relatives of the Yellow Gorgon that you can see in Cuc Phuong National Park (family Papilionidae, Swallowtails and Parnassians) are White Dragontail Butterfly (about 50%), Green Dragontail Butterfly (about 50%) and Spangle Swallowtail (about 50%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Yellow Gorgon is recorded against all the insects logged in Cuc Phuong National Park (9 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), 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.
