I was birdscoping on Riana’s balcony when a vividly-colored butterfly hovered into view and settled on a bougainvillea for a few seconds before flitting away. Good thing I got off some shots.

After a bit of rather intensive internet research (it’s much harder trying to verify the species name of a butterfly than that of a bird; I’ve said before that I’m no ornithologist, and let me add that I’m no lepidopterist either), I found out that this is a Delias Hyparete, which goes by the common name Painted Jezebel. This subspecies is the luzonensis, found in Bohol, Cebu, Leyte, Luzon, Marinduque, Mindoro, Negros, Panay, Panaon, Polillo, Samar, and Sibuyan.

The Olympus Microscopy Resource Center points out that female Painted Jezebels “flaunt brilliant hues of yellow and red contrasted by bold black veins on a white background” compared to the males which “are often paler and have less black on their wings than the females and, in some subspecies, are almost entirely white.” Based on this, what we have here is definitely a female.

By the way, according to one site on Expressions & Sayings, the phrase “painted Jezebel” refers to a:

shameless, immoral, scheming woman
Jezebel was the wife of Ahab, king of Israel, whom she introduces to the worship of Baal, the god of the Phoenicians, while persecuting the prophets of the Hebrew god, Jehovah, and drawing down upon herself the denunciation of Elijah. In II Kings, 9, she is referred to in connection with ‘whoredoms’ and ‘witchcrafts’, and her use of cosmetics (verse 30) has given rise to the expression a painted Jezebel for a woman who flaunts herself provocatively.

Uh-oh, what if the butterfly is male? To avoid confusion, maybe it should be called differently. It ought to have a new name of its own. (Maybe something like Rustom Padilla? No, wait, make that Bebe Gandanghari instead. Oops, that’ll just confuse the male butterfly - and almost everyone else - even more! )

Okay, enough of the irrelevant digressing. Let’s end with what I just wanted to say when I started this post: As these pictures show, we’re about to see more and more of the sunlit palette of colors that summer brings.

Isn’t that great?

Posted in: Better Earth, Photo Gallery | | March 2009