Tiger Longwing on pentas
Heliconius hecale
Tiger Longwing · Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden · 7 February 2026
A Tiger Longwing working a cluster of pentas in the butterfly house at Fairchild. It is a butterfly of the forests of Central and South America, from Mexico to Peru, and in the wild it flies the same route through the forest every day.
Heliconius butterflies are notable for returning to the same individual flowers day after day - a habit called trap-lining - and for eating pollen as well as nectar, which almost no other butterfly does; the extra protein lets them live for months rather than weeks and is thought to be what makes remembering a route worth the effort. The orange-and-black tiger pattern is shared by a whole ring of unrelated, unpalatable species that mimic each other.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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