India GO
Butterfly · Papilio demoleus
Lime Butterfly
IUCN LC · Least concern
A large black swallowtail marked with a broken band of cream, common wherever citrus and curry-leaf are grown.
How to recognise it
Fast, restless and rarely still, with no tails on the hindwing despite being a swallowtail. Two red-and-blue eye-spots sit at the inner corner of each hindwing.
Where to see it
Ajmer
Its caterpillar starts life looking exactly like a bird dropping and only later turns green, and it feeds on lemon and curry-leaf, so this is the butterfly of kitchen gardens rather than of forest. In Ajmer that means the garden plots and courtyard pots of the old city.
Daulat Bagh (Subhash Udyan) · Ana Sagar Lake (often)