Plain Tiger Danaus chrysippus
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La Palma - April 2001
These pictures all show males. The Plain Tiger is an exotic and glamorous butterfly but incredibly restless and it took me a long time to get these shots! They are taken on La Palma, one of the Canary Islands where this species still flies, breeding in hot coastal gullies - not really in the sort of places you expect to see something so spectacular. It also breeds locally around the Mediterranean coast but human activity threatens some of its habitats in southern Spain.