Common Crow Butterfly or Common Indian Crow is a brown colored nymphalid commonly seen in India and many of the other south Asian countries. It is also a milkweed butterfly.
Photo 1: Exif – f/4, 1/160 sec, ISO 400, Nikon D7100, Micro-Nikkor 105mm f2.8G ED VR. Date – Feb 7, 2016. Location – Thattekad, Kerala.
This photo was made from the Butterfly Park inside Thattekad Bird Sanctuary in Ernakulam district of Kerala. There were a number of these butterflies at that time inside the park. Some were having common roosts. There were also innumerable caterpillars of various species. One is visible in this picture also, at the tip of the branch where the butterfly is perched. The green leaves and yellow flowers, along with the soft light during the morning yielded a nice picture with a soft an colorful background.
More about Common Crow Butterfly (Euploe core)
The primary color of this butterfly is brown. The underside of the wing has two rows of white spots along the margin. The inner row is more elongated and bigger in size.
When looked from the underside, it looks similar to other ‘crow’ butterflies like Brown King Crow or Double Branded Crow at first glance. But the positioning and the number of spots are different.
On under hind wing, Common Indian Crow has a small white spot inside the cell towards the end. Then there are five more spots from spaces 2 to 6. The under fore wing also has a white spot inside the cell, along with other spots on different spaces. The face and thorax region is also brown-black in color with white spots. These observations are from the photo alone.
They generally flies very slowly. And can be found along with other milkweed butterflies like Striped Tiger Butterfly, sometimes on common roost plant. It is also seen all through the year and is a common visitor to gardens.
