Butterflies exhibit many different behavioural attributes of which basking and mud puddling is vital with respect to its physiology and reproductive success. Though this has been studied in detail in temperate regions of the world, seldom such behavioural attributes of oriental butterflies studied. Also, it is speculated that basking behaviour and colouration of butterflies have profound effect on the daily activity periods and patterns. On the other hand, butterfly assemblages in the puddles represent a subset of the community present in a particular habitat. In this regard, rather than looking at nutritional ecology or eco‐physiology, I address butterfly community dynamics at puddles through the following two objectives: diurnal variation in butterfly assemblages at puddle sites and variation in assemblages at puddle sites across different habitats. I address the first objective by observing butterfly assemblages at 32 puddles within evergreen forest for a total of 3.5 hr per day per puddle with 30 min interval starting from 1000 hr to 1330 hr. Results show significant variation in species richness, abundance and diversity diurnally at puddles. The butterfly assemblages were represented by a small fraction of highly abundant species and relatively large proportion of uncommon species. I address the second objective by surveying different habitats for butterfly assemblages at puddles. I found that the species diversity was highest in moist deciduous and evergreen forest, and lowest in teak plantations. Puddles in the moist deciduous forest and the evergreen forest shared higher percentage of butterfly species composition, whereas the teak plantations were least similar compared to other habitats. This study is a snapshot of butterfly community structure as seen at puddles, and is indicative of the butterfly community structure in these sites and habitats.