The great 'butterfly rescue' project

Now that we have our eyes peeled for new observations, thanks to iNat, we have been thrilled to find a couple of dead butterflies over the last month. However, recently my daughter came across what we thought was a dying butterfly. It was flopping around on the grass, unable to fly. We observed it for a while and figured it looked like a Common Grass Yellow butterfly, although there has been some debate when I uploaded my observation.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/88900386.

After mostly staying still or flopping on its side, it hopped onto the edge of my shoe and hung on. Not wanting it to get eaten by predators, my daughter suggested we bring it home. So we did and the day passed in a flurry of activity trying to figure out how to make it comfortable. We placed it in our small indoor balcony garden and fed it sugar water soaked in sponge bits. Surprised to find it alive the next morning, we gathered up flowers and spread them around with a sprinkling of sugar water for it to suck on. It did not move much but did manage to hop on some of the flowers and then, to our dismay, somehow dropped most of its left forewing. I added a note to the iNat observation, asking for advice but it got deleted somehow due to some sync issues I had at the time with the phone app.

To cut a long story short, the butterfly lived for about 5 days mostly staying still or briefly flopping around the fresh flowers we gave it each morning, ruining its wings further. It hid behind a pot or hung behind a leaf or petal for the first couple of nights and we could mostly only spot it suddenly lying sideways in the morning. Later it pretty much stayed in one or two spots on some flowers or on the floor.

We never actually saw it unfold its proboscis to suck the sugar water though we kept soaking the sponge pieces diligently. Does anyone have any experience with this? What could we have done better? Was it a good idea to bring the butterfly home and was it really dying - given the short life span, I was surprised it lived for nearly 5 more days at home!

We never did figure out its gender either or whether it even was a common grass yellow or a Lemon Emigrant as suggested by @firos_ak. Still looking for answers and hope we know better for the next time!

Publicado el agosto 19, 2021 05:56 MAÑANA por surabhi_srivastava_gaur