This butterfly belongs to the aristocracy of the butterfly world. It can be seen in our campus. It is not very easy to see this beauty because of its strong flight and habit of basking high on tree tops. But it is attracted to rotten food (fish, crab etc) and come to damp patches. So if you are willing, you can allure it with rotten food. It will not only attract Common Nawab but also many more attractive butterflies viz. Tawny Rajah, Black Rajah, Gaudy Baron to name a few. I saw it sipping tree sap once in the campus.
Paresh Kale and I first encounterd Common Nawab quite unexpectedly. One weekend we were casually walking along Lake side road. We saw on Acacia sp. empty pupa. It was more or less rounded, stout, short, hanging by single attachment with no body band. Some red spots were visible just above the wing case and rounded 'dots' on head. It was about 3 feet from ground. We realise that we got something “unusual”. In our excitement we search plant meticulously (thanks to plants small height ~ 6 feet). To our great joy we found green caterpillar with yellowish green V- shaped bands on its body and four horns on its head. It was resting peacefuly on silken bed woven on upperside of leaves. Later we found out it was mature and it pupated within few days. Beautiful butterfly emerge around noon after 8 days of pupation.
After that we (Swapnil, Paresh and I) saw Common Nawab around the same spot frequently at ~ 12 noon. We saw female lying an egg on upperside of a leaf. The egg was yellow in colour and rounded in shape. At a time as many as 4 caterpillar were seen on the plant. So it was really common after all in IITB campus. It was also seen egg lying in Nagala block. It is more frequently seen than Tawny Rajah and Black Rajah.
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| Pupa of Common Nawab |
N.B. We saw Nawab (which one?) saw laying egg on underside of a leaf of some Gulamohar type tree, near Staff canteen. But unfortunately we didn't get its life-cycle.
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| Egg of Common Nawab |
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