Birdwing Butterfly

Facts about Birdwing Butterfly, The Birdwing Butterfly are considered belonging to three genera, such as Trogonoptera, Ornithoptera, and Troides papilionid of the Papilionidae family. The Birdwing Butterfly hail from the Subcontinent of India, mainland and archipelagic Southeastern parts of Asia and Australasia. Birdwing Butterfly have given the name for their extraordinary angular wings, size and birdlike flight. The Birdwing Butterfly are the third biggest butterflies in the world. Birdwing Butterfly are admired among the butterfly collectors, owing to their bright colors and size. The Birdwing Butterfly usually prefer to live in rainforests, and they generally glimpsed down the woodland periphery. The Birdwing Butterfly are powerful flyers and look for sunny spots to lie around.

Features

Birdwing Butterfly are big-size butterflies, with a maximum body length of 3 inches (7.6 cm) and a maximum wingspan of 11 inches (28 cm). The Birdwing Butterfly have an ostentatious coloration in contrasting colors of yellow, green, white, black and occasionally orange or blue. The Birdwing Butterfly have slim, lanceolate front wings, and their back wings have no tails.

Sexual dimorphism in Birdwing Butterfly is strong. Usually female butterflies are less colorful and bigger than the males. The male Birdwing Butterfly appear with a black color body, combined with vivid iridescent blue, green, yellow or orange in color, whereas the females are overall dark brownish or black color body, with white, yellow or light brown color markings.

Both male and female Birdwing Butterfly have jet black to brown color dorsal front wings, habitually with the veins outlined in grey color to creamy-white color. The Birdwing Butterfly have thermoreceptors, which are sensitive to abrupt increases in temperature, and they assist them to regulate the heat in their body and keep them away from overheating during basking.

The colors of most of the varieties of Birdwing Butterfly are pigmentary, and they are famous for their exploit of restricted-view iridescence. The yellow color of the dorsal back wings is tailored by vivid blue-green iridescence that can be seen only when the Birdwing Butterfly is observed at a narrow, sloping angle. This foraging iridescence is brought about in the course of diffraction of light by their very steeply-set wings, multi-covered scales similar to a rib.

Diet

Birdwing Butterfly mostly feed upon, and they are chief long-range pollinators of the nectar-bearing flowers of the woodland canopy, in addition to earthly flowers, like lantana.

Reproduction

Breeding behavior in Birdwing Butterfly differs a bit between varieties. The role of the female butterfly is relatively inactive, gradually fluttering between perches, whereas the male butterfly will perform a detailed, shaking yet motionless dance at a height between 20 and 50 cm above the female Birdwing Butterfly. Subsequent to mating, female Birdwing Butterfly immediately start to look for suitable host plants, climbing vines and some other suitable types of plants. The female will lay her round eggs beneath the tips of the leaves of the vine at the rate of one egg per leaf. The female Birdwing Butterfly are capable of laying a maximum of 300 eggs in their lifetime. The caterpillars of Birdwing Butterfly are insatiable eaters, but they move extremely little such that a small group will defoliate the whole vine. If these caterpillars are starved because of overcrowding, they may become an alternative to cannibalism. Fleshy tubercles similar to spine, line the backs of the caterpillars, and they appear with a dark red to tan and soft black color body. Birdwing Butterfly are insects. A Birdwing Butterfly is a herbivore; Meaning that as a caterpillar its first food is its own eggshell and than it will eat the leaves of the plant on which it is hatched. When it becomes a butterfly, it will feed mostly on nectar from flowers, rotting fruit and water with a "proboscis" - a long narrow tube in their mouth that looks like a straw.

Life cycle of a Birdwing Butterfly comes in four stages, egg, larva "caterpillars", pupa "chrysalis" and adult Butterfly.
A Birdwing Butterfly will attach its eggs to leaves with a special glue.

When caterpillars become fully grown they will attach to an appropriate leaf or small branch, than they will shed the outside layer of their skin and a hard skin underneath known as a "chrysalis" will be their new look
An adult Birdwing Butterfly will come out from the "chrysalis" than it waits a few hours for its wings to dry and fill with blood, before it takes its first flight.

Birdwing Butterfly can see yellow, green, and red. An adult Birdwing Butterfly average life span is from a week to a year
The top flight speed of a Birdwing Butterfly is 12 miles per hour (19 Km/ph) and some moths can fly up to 25 miles per hour (40 Km/ph).
A Birdwing Butterfly is cold-blooded, which means the body temperature is not regulated on its own. A Birdwing Butterfly can't fly or eat if their body temperature is below 82 degrees fah (28 cel). Birdwing Butterfly are often basking in the sun with their wings open to gain heat and than the veins in the wings carry the heat to the body.
A Birdwing Butterfly has sense organ, on their feet or tarsi, for tasting
The estimate is between 15000 and 20000 different species of butterfly.

A Birdwing Butterfly has a small body, made up of three parts – the head, abdomen and thorax. A Birdwing Butterfly has two large eyes, which are made up of many small parts which are called "compound eyes".
A Birdwing Butterfly has two antenna's on the top of their heads, which they use to smell, hear and feel. A Birdwing Butterfly mouth is a long tube a "proboscis" - a long narrow tube in their mouth that looks like a straw when its done eating, it rolls the tube back up.

A Birdwing Butterfly has three pairs of legs and their feet have little claws that help them stand on flowers. The Birdwing Butterfly wings are made up of hard tubes that are covered with a thin tissue. The butterfly's wings are covered with fine dusty like scales. A Birdwing Butterfly has four brightly colored wings having distinctive patterns made up of tiny scales. The bright patterns scales sometimes have hidden ultraviolet patterns for attracting mates. The bright colors are also used as camouflage to hide them or scare off predictors.