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Wildbuzz: Mysteries take a wild flight
A butterfly misidentified for years as Common sailer was revealed as Creamy sailer in Chandigarh; a Kalij pheasant's strange presence raises concerns of illegal captivity.
Wild creatures may be found off their known geographical maps and out of their supposed “comfort zones” by a quirk of chance or may suffer from mistaken identity. Such freakish specimens may remain unknown for years and mystery can eternally shroud their origins.
A butterfly photographed at the Dr PN Mehra Botanical Gardens (PU) on February 25, 2019, was wrongly identified and passed off as quite a common creature (Common sailer --- Neptis hylas) for the Chandigarh region! Till, an expert from Nainital rang the proverbial alarm bell on May 19, 2025, and its identity was corrected to bag the honour of the first established record for the Creamy sailer (Neptis soma) in the Chandigarh region (a species otherwise known to frequent elevations of 1,000-2,800 m).
A parallel mystery unfolded on Friday when a farmhouse owner near the Patiala-Nabha road found a female Kalij pheasant in the jaws of his pet pie dog. The farm is close to a jungle but the presence of a Kalij so far away from its known range in the hills indicates it may not have been a natural phenomenon.
First, to the butterfly enigma. Rajesh Khurana is an empathetic naturalist and has since retired after service as a career banker. He will stop to photograph an obscure balloon frog in the middle of a rickety road, spend days patiently counting the number of fruits a hornbill carries in its pouch for the nesting female and feel deeply aggrieved at the pain in the expressive eyes of commercial fishes netted from the Sukhna Lake and writhing on the bank. The world may turn a stony eye to fish on death row but their voiceless agony and torturous gasping at thin air tormented Khurana’s gentle soul.
The wandering Khurana had taken photographs of the butterfly and posted them on a Facebook butterfly group in 2019. The identity was then wrongly assigned to Common sailer, which has been recorded in Chandigarh quite often. So, Khurana’s photographs plunged into a deep digital dustbin. “I received a message out of the blue in May 2025. It was from butterfly expert Peter Smetaceck. He had come across my pictures on the Facebook group and offered his congratulations. He told me that my specimen was ‘Neptis soma (Creamy sailer) and a new record for Chandigarh’. Smetaceck advised that my record deserved publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and left it that,” Khurana told this writer.
The group of butterflies to which the sailers belong are prone to misidentification. I sought an enhanced perspective from Spain-based expert and author Purnendu Roy, who is renowned for butterfly identification. “Yes, to me (Khurana’s specimen) is most likely Neptis soma, but this is a difficult genus. For identification: (i) on the underside hindwing, the marginal and white submarginal lines are both continuous and quite clear (ii) on the forewing, the upper three sub-marginal spots are clearly shifted in (iii) the hindwing cilia seems quite wide, but it would be better to see this from the upper side,” Roy told this writer.
Now, to a more vexed question. What on earth was a hilly Kalij doing in the Patiala plains where she met an untimely death in a dog’s jaws? According to farmhouse owner, Abhimanyu Saagar: “Our land is semi-wild (five acres) and there is a larger (area of) government forest land on one side. So, wild animals do turn up: Monitor lizards, Stone curlews, snakes, mongooses, francolins, peacocks etc...and so the Kalij,’’ Saagar told this writer.
However, while the possibility of the female Kalij breeding in the Patiala jungle or being a natural vagrant or freak migrant cannot be ruled out, it is unlikely. There are no known wild Kalij records from the deeper plains of Punjab. That makes the needle of suspicion point to the female kept illegally in captivity, escaping or freed surreptitiously by its keeper in the jungle. The possibility that she escaped from legal captivity can be ruled out as Kalij specimens are not maintained at the mini-zoo (Bir Moti Bagh) and aviary in Baradari Gardens, Patiala.
This leaves the potential for illegal indulgences by a game bird fancier. Patiala is a hub of ex-shikaris, ex-poachers and active poachers. Captive birds have been seized in Patiala. Startling disclosures were made by fanciers / keepers while availing governmental amnesty schemes in the first decade of the millennium to legalise possession of live Indian wild birds and wildlife trophies. An erstwhile royal had then declared the following birds to the Forests and Wildlife Preservation department at Patiala: 81 Red jungle fowl, 19 Chukor, eight francolins and four Painted spurfowl.
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