Postman
Heliconius sp.
Longwing · Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden · 7 February 2026
A postman butterfly in the butterfly house at Fairchild, one of the longwings of the forests of Central and South America, where it flies the same round of flowers at the same time every day, which is the name.
The red-black-white "postman" pattern is carried almost identically by two unrelated species, Heliconius erato and Heliconius melpomene, which mimic each other so closely across their shared range that telling them apart usually needs a look at the hindwing rays rather than the pattern at a glance. Not reliably visible here, so I've left it at genus.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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