Of colours that flutter by

For those who want to see the spectacular sight of hundreds of butterflies flitting around hundreds of flowers, there are two options. Make a long journey to Singapore, Malaysia or Madagascar. Or make a short one to Thane and 10 kms beyond on Godbunder Road till you reach a nondescript village called Ovale.

In Ovale, you will find Ovalekar Wadi, a two-acre farm that attracts over a 100 species of butterflies like a green magnet. This open farm (most butterfly gardens, including the ones mentioned above, are enclosed inside gigantic nets), you will find butterflies that descend from the eastern side of Sanjay Gandhi National Park looking for food plants and nectar plants. And Ovalekar Wadi offers them a veritable buffet because every plant and tree here has been handpicked for a single purpose: It has to be of some use to butterflies!

How did a paddy field turn into a butterfly garden? The Ovalekars have been living in this Wadi for four generations. After they gave up paddy cultivation a decade ago, the farm started wearing a deserted look. Meanwhile, Rajendra Ovalekar, the youngest in the family, took up a job as a school teacher and moved to Thane City.

The farm kept drawing him back as he had a keen interest in the birds and the bees and the insects that frequented the place. Once in 2004, he attended a programme that changed his life and the life of his Wadi. It was called Breakfast with Butterflies and was organised by BNHS. In the audio-visual presentation, there were two sections.

One was an introduction to the various species of butterflies, and the other section was on the plants and trees that attract butterflies. To his joy, he realised that some of these plants and trees were already there in his Wadi, and he vowed to get the rest of them planted there.

Rajendra was encouraged by none other than the father of butterfly watching in India, Isaac Kehimkar.

Under his watchful eyes, and over the next seven years, Rajendra went on a planting spree. He not only planted trees and plants and weeds (yes, weeds attract butterflies too), but also ruthlessly removed those that were of no consequence to them. Today there are over 5,000 such plants and trees here — 180 species, each of which is used as a food plant or a nectar plant.

The result is a plethora of butterflies of all colours and hues, each one with a strange-sounding name: Gaudy Baron, Striped Tiger, Swordtail, Bluebottle, Commander, Common Crow, Wanderer, Crimson Rose, Monkey Puzzle, Grass Demon, etc.!

As he took us around, Rajendra explained how to observe butterflies and even photograph them from close quarters. They are ideal candidates, he said, for lazy nature lovers. Unlike birds, they don’t wake up with the sun. They get up two hours later. Since they are solar-powered, they have to wait till the sun is truly up and about. So they reach the Wadi around nine in the morning. That’s when they are most approachable. Then they become increasingly hyper, and by noontime they are thoroughly exhausted and rest in the shade.

Interestingly, smaller butterflies choose smaller flowers and the bigger ones choose bigger flowers. Ample proof that at least in Nature, size does matter.

When Rajendra spotted a Tawny Rajah, he clapped like a child and told me to take a photograph. He advised me to have the camera in ‘shoot position’, so that I don’t make a sudden movement by lifting the camera and scaring the butterfly. Then he told me to move towards the butterfly, one step at a time, clicking a photograph at every step. Now he said, depending on my luck, and its mood, it may allow me to get ‘up close and personal’.

At the end of the session, keep the best and delete the rest!
At the Interpretation Centre in the Wadi, there were photographs and descriptions of various butterflies and moths, to initiate the greenhorns. The best way to start the delightful pursuit of butterflying, as Isaac calls it, is to learn to identify a few, and then you start seeing them everywhere, and you wonder how you saw past them all these years.

As we stepped out of the Centre, we witnessed one of Nature’s most amazing miracles. On a lime tree, a butterfly was emerging from its pupa. A wet, rolled up butterfly came out of its cocoon, and slowly like a flower, it blossomed in front of our eyes. As the morning sun dried up its glistening wings, it must have felt an unbearable lightness of being, and it flew away into the distance in slow-motion.

I was told that the lifespan of a butterfly is just two to four weeks, and as if to make up for the lack of time, some of them start looking for a mate as soon as they are born.That left me wondering whether this newborn had gone looking for a mate, or for food, or just to find its own place in the sun.

There are over 18,000 species of butterflies in the world, 1,501 in India and over 140 in amchi Mumbai alone.

If we manage to attract at least a dozen of them to our own private butterfly garden, in our balcony or terrace or window-sill or  our housing society compound, we would have done our small bit to conserve this wonderful world of butterflies. Happy butterflying!