When we went to Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary, on the last day of our (well, Gopal and I….Vinay and Yash are still not back!) trip to Assam, butterflies were certainly not on my mind. I wanted Gopal to see the Hoolock Gibbons, and perhaps some of the other macaques.

When, after a long time we did get to see the Gibbons, we watched a family of three for a while, when we were told that a group of Black-capped Langurs were in the trees near the front office, and so off we went there, along the Guwahati-Tinsukia railway tracks!

After watching the Langurs for a while, we suddenly heard the hooting of the Gibbons again, and off went Gopal quickly. I followed a little more sedately, because I was not sure I would be able to see the animals in the foliage…and because some creatures of the air and sunshine had caught my eye.

Many of them were “lifers” (first-time sightings) for me…here are a few, that I managed to click…

The

COMMON MAP:

This one is the COLOUR SERGEANT (female) Here's the CLEAR SAILOR (I can recognize a Sailor, but whether it's Clear or Opaque is beyond me!) The BLUE TIGER (this is one I've seen in Bangalore) I couldn't get a match for this one at all, and Karthik took quite a lot of trouble to correctly id it for me....here's the GREAT ARCHDUKE: The FLUFFY TIT was a butterfly I'd seen before in Debang, Arunachal Pradesh:

One of the most beautiful was this

LEOPARD LACEWING:

Thanks to Rohit Girotra and Karthik for help with the id’s…without them, most of these photos would probably not have titles at all!