A rare butterfly from the Red Book was spotted in Chita

A rare butterfly, Tatarinov's hawk moth, was spotted in the Sukhotino Ethnopark in Chita. A resident of the city shared a photo of an unusual insect, the ChitaMedia news agency reported on Monday, June 30.

Tatarinov's hawk moth is listed in the Red Book of the Trans-Baikal Territory and is a rare species of local butterflies. They appear in the region at the end of June and in July. They live in floodplain shrubby thickets.

The species is named after Alexander Tatarinov, Russia's plenipotentiary representative in China and a doctor at the Russian ecclesiastical mission in the period 1840-1850. He collected butterflies in Beijing and its surroundings, and then donated them to the private collection of a professional gardener from St. Petersburg, Vasily Gray.