Four new butterfly varieties seen in Salem forest division

SALEM: Four new varieties of butterflies and a new bird species were spotted in the Salem forest division during the three-day census that was carried out jointly by the forest department and Salem Nature Society (SNS) recently. In total, they have recorded 214 varieties of birds and 136 species of butterflies in the forest division.
V Gokul, president, SNS, said, “The bird and butterfly survey was carried out by 135 specialists from various states for three days from Friday to Sunday (February 14-16).” The survey covered all the nine forest ranges in the Salem forest division.
According to N Murugesan, secretary, SNS, three of the four new butterfly varieties - common tinsel, pale four-line blue and ransparent six-line blue - were spotted in the Yercaud forest range and the remaining one - chocolate albatross - in the Danishpet forest range. They were spotted by butterfly experts A Pavendhan, S Soundararaj, T Nagaraj, R Krishnamoorthy and K K Nilesh.
Pointing out that common tinsel was usually seen only in the Western Ghats and Northeast India, he said this was probably the first time the butterfly variety was seen in Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu. The butterfly is small in size and comes with silver edged bands, grey-brown lower body and blue upper body. The bird was seen resting on a leaf with wings held uptight in Yercaud Hills at an altitude of approximately 1,400m.
The rare bird species - white-rumped spinetail - was meanwhile spotted in the North Shervarayan forest range by a team comprising Mohammed Shahidh, Noorbriyan and Abdul Rehman Mahi. Other birds spotted in the division include Indian grey hornbill, brown hawk-owl and winter migrants such as European bee-eater, blue-capped rock thrush, rusty-tailed flycatcher, verditer flycatcher, blue rock thrush, northern pintail, garganey and forest wagtail.