Website update : 15th February 2025

At last, an Update!

It’s been a long time since my last update. During the winter I became ill and I ended up being unable to do any butterflying until the start of December, which was very frustrating as a number of my favourite species are on the wing in the Spring but I couldn’t go to look for them.

I finally made it out to the Blue Mountains on 1st December, to meet up with Scottish couple Colin & Joan and (hopefully) see some interesting butterflies. We started by going to a couple of hilltops at Bell, where we unfortunately didn’t see any Golden Ant-blues (Acrodipsas aurata) though eventually a Bronze Ant-blue (A. brisbanensis) turned up. He mostly settled at the top of the tallest eucalypt on the hilltop; which isn’t very high up but far enough to prevent us from getting any decent photos. After we repeatedly shook the eucalypt he deigned to settle on a low shrub for long enough to allow a couple of photos.

There weren’t all that many butterflies to be seen, though they did include several new species for Colin and Joan. During the afternoon we moved onto Blackheath but by the time we got there the clouds had closed in and the wind had strengthened; it had become rather cool and almost nothing was flying. We therefore made the best of it and went to the pub for a couple of beers.

The following weekend we tried again, though this time we started by going to Clarence to look for the Montane Iris-skipper (Mesodina aeluropis). This site is true skipper country and at times there can be several interesting species to be seen there. This day was one of the exceptions; we trudged around for a while before we managed to find a single skipper, which turned out to be an aeluropis so the first target for the day was ticked.

At Bell we again missed out on aurata, so we again went on to Blackheath. It was sunny this time and we made several quick stops finding a new species for Colin and Joan at each of them. Our last site for the day was the hilltop where we were hoping to see the Moonlight Jewel, a.k.a Blue Jewel (Hypochrysops delicia), which I think was the species C&J were most keen to see. Late in the afternoon we were treated by the appearance of two of these lovely butterflies, one of which was a pristine fresh specimen. As usual they would appear out of nowhere, circle the hilltop a couple of times at high speed whilst dogfighting with any other hilltopping butterflies they could find, and then disappear for half an hour or so. But our patience was rewarded as they did settle a couple of times to pose for photos, though the strong breeze made it very difficult to get decent shots.  The delicia were the last butterflies we saw that day, as low cloud swept in and cloaked the whole of Blackheath in fog. We again adjourned to the pub, though this time in a more celebratory mood.

I took very few photos on those two days, but they did show that I was able to out and about again provided I took things easy and didn’t overdo it.

My next trip was to Georges Hall in suburban Sydney, to a bushland reserve that’s home to a colony of Imperial Hairstreaks (Jalmenus evagoras). This was a day when a plan really paid off. In my early days of butterfly photography, back in early April 2004, I took my first photos of evagoras. I was using a little point-and-shoot digital camera back then, and I was not taking shots at the highest resolution owing to a rather stupid preference for being able to store more images on the memory card. On that day I had some evagoras pose beautifully with their wings spread flat, sitting on low plants to allow me to get the ideal angle.

In the 20 years since then I had photographed a large number of evagoras but they had never posed so well for me. This day, 22nd December, started cool with a heavy overcast and almost no wind, though the forecast predicted it would become warmer, brighter and breezier during the day. I reckoned that if I got to Georges Hall before the evagoras got warmed up I might have the chance of getting them while they were opening their wings wide so as to maximise the UV they could absorb. For once a plan of mine actually worked. One individual was particularly cooperative, sitting in a perfect pose for several minutes while I just kept on taking shot after shot. By lunchtime it had become warm and windy, and the butterflies had become way too frisky, so I put my camera away and went home.