In four previous blogs, I discussed top tips to become a good butterfly photographer: preparation, equipment, location and qualities. Today, I would like to add a fifth top tip: species knowledge.
Assuming that you would like to identify what you have photographed, basic species knowledge is essential. Everybody knows that. What I would like to highlight here is that to identify certain species, you need to combine knowledge with preparation.
Take for instance the very common Essex skipper (Thymelicus lineola). I photographed this particular specimen close to home.
The Essex skipper can only be distinguished from its close relative the Small Skipper (Thymelicus sylvestris) by the colour of the lower front-end of the antenna tip: black in the Essex skipper and orange in the Small skipper. The frontal shot of the Small skipper below shows that difference in colour clearly.
This is something that you would need to know prior to going in the field. Otherwise, you may just take a photograph of the dorsal side and be unable to check the colour of the antenna tip afterwards.
Now, in Europe, there are only a handful of butterflies that require specific knowledge to differentiate two species. It gets far more difficult in the neotropics.
For example when I visited Ecuador for the first time in 2021, I took this lovely shot of a Leondonta species, a member of the Whites (Pieridae) family. As Ecuador boasts well over 3,000 species my knowledge in general prior to our trip was average and specific species knowledge was poor. It turned out that a couple of Leodonta species are very much alike or even identical from the ventral side. It never occurred to me at the time to pick this butterfly up and photograph its dorsal side. It will probably forever remain just “Leondanta sp.”.
Another example was this Jamides species in Vietnam in 2023. There are a couple of Jamides species that show similar patterns on the ventral side. Actually, I did know that I would need a photograph of the upperside, but I simply forgot to take one. So I will probably never be able to put a name to this specimen.
Of course, other than gently picking a butterfly up, there is a more subtle way to get a glimpse at the upperside: just get your camera ready in slowmotion video mode, aim it at the butterfly from a distance, disturb the butterfly and make it fly away and then grab a frame from your video showing the ventral side.
I have learned now to try and get a shot from both sides of the butterfly, unless I know for certain that I can ID it from just the ventral or dorsal side. Next time I go out to the tropics, I intend to photograph any butterfly from every possible angle as far as the circumstances allow, and learn to memory beforehand as much as possible all difficult-to-ID species. Hope to tell you later this year to what extent I succeeded!
Red admiral 