Spot swordtail

[Prajwal J Ullal]

While roaming around with my colleague in search of the spot swordtail, had spotted them at some areas of Sanjay Gandhi national park, i couldnt spot any of them, but could see a lot of others. Almost filled with disappointment while we decided to leave the place, through the dried trail, we finally spotted a swordtail and the best thing was it was very static, probably in sleep(around 10:30 a.m.). We both positioned ourselves comfortably along the slope-y area filled with dried grass and few burnt down patch and tried getting as many shots as possible. The butterfly slowly started opening its wings, but whenever a wasp or other butterfly flew by it would close it back again. After several such instances finally it opened up completely and slowly closed it back before flying off to a different spot. Here is one of those moments I could successfully capture.
I believe, experts correct me if I am wrong, that these beauties stay stagnant till 10:30 11 and then become very active as in previous occasions I had spotted them very active and agile in the later part of the day.

EXIF:
Canon 550D
Canon 55-250 IS
F/7.1
Shutterspeed 1/1600
ISO 400(because it was a strange day with big patches of flying cloud I had to keep the ISO slightly higher)
Handheld
Location: SGNP

[Mrudul Godbole]

Good details. The vertical composition looks nice. Did you try a further narrower aperture? Thanks for sharing.

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Nice frame. No idea about the activity hours of this species, but 10.30 sounds pretty late for a butterfly.

[Prajwal J Ullal]

I couldnt get much good frames in this angle due to ample wind and also it kept on closing its wings, so couldnt experiment with deeper DOF

[Sabyasachi Patra]

You have to time your click according to their wing beats. They don't do it haphazard, so you can easily time it and click when the wings are momentarily still. That would help you in having deeper depth of field without motion blur. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi