I met some entomologists looking for Chestnut Tiger Butterflies (asagi-madara) in our local insect park (hotaru-no-sato), but it was a windy day and pretty cool so they said that they didn’t expect to find any. The reason they were looking is that it’s part of an annual “catch and release” programme to determine the migration paths of this species. It’s amazing how far they fly — coming all the way down to Kyushu from Nagano. Munakata seems to be a popular stopping off point for them.
Anyway, by chance (and because I was looking!), I found four of these butterflies during my walk along a disused mountain road, shielded from the wind. I saw four but only managed to get photos of two of them.

Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae
Paranatica sita
Chestnut Tiger Butterfly
Japanese name = asagi-madara

This beautiful (newly emerged perhaps) Japanese Giant Silkworm Moth (Saturnia japonica, or Caligula japonica) was on a wall in Yamada Village, Munakata. It’s a native of East Asia and has a wingspan of 10-13cm.

Lepidoptera: Saturniidae
Saturnia japonica
Japanese Giant Silkworm Moth
Japanese name = kususan

I spotted this orange hairstreak butterfly sitting on a leaf on the side of Mt Joyama in Munakata. You can see that it appears to have another “head” (with antennae) at the back, at the lower edge of the wings. Several kinds of butterflies have these. The theory is that this has evolved to fool predators into attacking the wrong part of the body… In other words, if a bird tries to grab this butterfly by it’s head, it might be the fake head, and the butterfly can escape. Very cunning.

Orange Hairstreak (Japonica lutea) = aka-shijimi in Japanese