Acrodipsas cuprea (Copper Ant-blue)

Acrodipsas cuprea cuprea
Acrodipsas cuprea variablis

Other Common Names

Cuprea Ant-blue

Notes

This was the first Ant-blue species I ever saw, just as I was beginning to doubt their very existence.

At Mt. Ngungun there were a number of butterflies hilltopping, including several of this species, along with a couple of A. brisbanensis. The Acros were flying around and settling on two small trees close to the highest point on the hilltop; brisbanensis was harder to photograph as it mostly stayed on the taller of these trees. Fortunately cuprea mainly used the lower tree, and even though it was windy I was able to get a number of good shots.

I regularly saw cuprea at the top of Mount Sugarloaf, near Newcastle, but the problem with that hilltop is the fact that the trees are tall, so most of the interesting butterflies tend to settle too high up for me to be able to get decent photos. 

The hilltop at Shoal Bay is much better for this species, as the trees are not tall so the cuprea tend to settle around head height, and often lower. At this site they are considerably darker in appearance than I have seen elsewhere. This is partly because the cuprea around Brisbane are a different subspecies, but I think the Shoal Bay specimens are very dark regardless of that.

Sightings

Mt Ngungun, Glasshouse Mountains, QLD – November 2008
Mount Tibberoowuccum, Glasshouse Mountains, QLD – February 2010
Mount Sugarloaf, NSW – November 2010, December 2010, February 2011
Shoal Bay, NSW – November 2016, October 2018, October 2019, October 2020, October 2023

Links