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Pale green and yellow butterflies packed shoulder to shoulder beside one long-tailed striped butterfly

Peru

Butterfly Mud-Puddling in the Peruvian Amazon

August 2004

The Peruvian Amazon supports an exceptionally diverse butterfly community. These photographs, taken in 2004, document groups of butterflies gathering on exposed, damp soil beside a river.

This behavior is known as mud-puddling. Butterflies use their proboscises to draw moisture containing dissolved salts and other nutrients from mud, sand, animal waste, or decaying organic material. Males commonly engage in mud-puddling and may use some of the acquired nutrients during reproduction.

The gathering includes butterflies with different colors, wing patterns, and forms, indicating that several species, and possibly more than one butterfly family, were feeding at the same site. Identifying them as a single “sulphur butterfly” species would not be supported by the photographs alone.

Dozens of pale green and white butterflies strung along a sandbank above the water
Pale green and yellow butterflies packed shoulder to shoulder beside one long-tailed striped butterfly
A striped, long-tailed butterfly hovering above others feeding on the damp sand
In flight above the cluster, a tailed butterfly with white and dark banded wings
Lone striped butterfly probing the sand while a bright yellow one flies overhead
Wings raised, a long-tailed butterfly feeds on sand as another passes behind it
Butterflies crowded at the lip of the bank, pale green ones lifting off
Proboscis lowered to the wet soil, a banded butterfly feeds among pale green ones
Beside a clod of damp earth, a white and black striped butterfly with long tails
One tailed butterfly settled on sunlit sand, another flying above it
Shaded ridge of sand where a striped butterfly feeds beside pale green wings
Butterflies scattered down the bank in brown, orange, yellow and white
Several butterflies spread along a sloping bank, an orange one at the right

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