Good morning,
Hi Jason, Thanks so much for your reply and I'm so happy I could inspire you with my diary. I would love to contribute to the magazine and I'll send you an email soon. It would be super to share some more of my butterfly experiences form here in SA. I also just received Steve Woodhal'ls book 'Field guide to butterlies of South Africa' which I can highly recommend.
David, The Black eye is a beautiful little creature and one that is very difficult to find by design. I know a few fairly reliable spots but even then it's not guaranteed to find one.
Yesterday, I was extremely surprised myself by a close relative of this butterfly! I'd been working all day and on the way to the shower, with a cup of tea, I visited the vegetable patch and see if anything interesting was happening. Second vegetable bed and my eyes were immediately drawn to a small and delicate butterfly with extremely long tails nectaring at a yellow brassica flower. At first I thought it must be a new hairstreak because of the long tails but then quickly realised no, it was something else, a species I never thought I'd see here - a Tailed black eye -
Leptomyrina hirundo .
I was so excited to see this new species for the farm and also amazed at its beauty and delicateness, particularly the way it flies. It moves from one perch to the next with a soft and slow skipping flight seldom rising more than a few feet from the ground. And because it flies so slowly its very easy to identify in flight, unlike many of the other lycaenids which are fast and often just a flash of blue passing by. Of course the Tailed black eye has very long tails and these are another give away! I think I have never seen a butterfly with such long tails in comparison to it's size - truly special.
After sipping some nectar, sunbathing a little and comprehensively exploring the vegetable patch for 30 or 40 minutes, the Tailed black eye completed one final loop before accelerating to quite a speed to disappear up and over the trees in the direction of the mountain to the east. I suspect up there on the mountain slope must be a colony because that's where it's food plants, Cotyledon and Kalanchoe, grow.
Leptomyrina hirudo - Tailed black eye
Leptomyrina hirudo - Tailed black eye
Leptomyrina hirudo - Tailed black eye
The last month here on the farm has been particularly good for butterflies and along with the tailed black eye I have come across a flurry of new species. A couple of days before, we were driving with the aim to see one of the rare hairstreaks I've been searching for a long time. The area is rich in this hairstreak's food plants, the large and small leaved sourplums and I always feel confident there may be a colony or two in the area. As usual no hairstreaks showed themselves but half way along the stretch I spotted a pretty little Lycaenid land in the grass. It's underside pattern was so unique I saw immediately it was also a new species for the farm - A Mocker bronze -
Cacyreus virilis.
Cacyres virilis Mocker bronze
I was particularly impressed by the beautiful patterns on the underside of this butterfly and surprised I'd never some across a specimen before because it seems hard to confuse it with any other lycaenid. Possibly its very localised and also has an early and late brood so is easily missed if one is searching for butterflies only in the warmer summer months. Now it will be interesting to see if more specimens pop up because I'll spend some more time exploring the area where I came across it. In this particular area of the farm I suspect there may also be some more of the quite scarce
Lepidochrysops or Giant cupids as they are now called. So far we have found one of these - the Patricia blue or Patrician Giant cupid - Lepidochrysops patricia, which I covered in an earlier post.
Over the last week I also experienced one of the highlights of the butterfly season here. I was awake early one morning and had walked up the road to find a spot to catch the early morning sun. At the house, the surrounding hills cut the sun in the morning by about an hour compared to some nearby areas and on a cool autumn morning to find a warm spot to watch the morning unfold is very pleasant.
Previously to this morning, for a number of weeks I had been searching for Apricot playboys and trying hard to get some decent images. Each time i'd seen one of these butterflies, it lived up to it's name, playing it's game of bobbing and diving before vanishing over the tree tops. My veg patch had proved a good spot early morning but still the lone individuals didn't stick around long enough for some images.
I had started to get a little frustrated and wondered how to find the playboys at a time when they might be a little more relaxed. And then finally it happened, on this morning, and purely by luck. I was sitting on a rock ten yards up the mountainside with the sun just peeping over the hills, warming the spot where i was sat and suddenly a large and fast lycaenid came tumbling out of the sky, landing clumsily on a small bush by the side of the road. Judging by it's build I thought it must be a playboy and upon closer inspection I found it to be a female Apricot playboy - Deudorix dinochares. The air temperate was still low but it seemed this individual timed her entrance perfectly to catch the first warming rays of the sun.
Deudorix dinochares - Apricot playboy female
After seeing this first Playboy I moved a little down the road to the spot where the sun's rays were warming a small area of bush where the road turns sharply to the right and then runs through the valley. The road after the turn was all in shade, but the area to the left was warming up every minute and quickly I saw more playboys dropping into the area. These powerful little butterflies, still cold from the night seemed to be throwing themselves from the surrounding trees. They would arrive fast and directly, seemingly without much control, to land on the damp grass or on the small bushes dotted about the area. After ten minutes I found I was surrounded by playboys, but not just one species! There was an equal amount of Apricot and Brown playboys -
Deudorix antalus! These species have an early hatch back around September/October and then now this late hatch comes, so outside these times playboys are hard to see!
But now my frustrations ended and I had a chance to photograph and spend considerable time with these little beauties. The female Apricot playboy is far duller than the male, which is brilliant orange, but she is still a stunning little butterfly. The brown Playboy female is very similar to the apricot female, whereas the male is plain brown. The undersides give them away, with the Apricot playboy being decorated with orange markings compared to the browns on the Brown Playboy.
Deudorix dinochares - Apricot playboy male
Deudorix dinochares - Apricot playboy male
Deudorix dinochares - Apricot playboy male
Deudorix dinochares - Apricot playboy male
Interestingly the Playboy's larvae don't feed on leaves but rather on seed pods of various trees and also sometimes on galls found on these trees. Both the Apricot and Brown playboys have many food plants and due to this, I suspect these species are more common here than I suspected! It's all about timing and being in the right spot at the right time!
Deudorix antalus - Brown playboy
Deudorix antalus - Brown playboy female
Deudorix antalus - Brown playboy female
Deudorix antalus - Brown playboy female
Deudorix antalus - Brown playboy male
Amongst all the playboys were a few other gems of the lycaenid world. Some such as the black pie, common hairtail and common blue I've already mentioned but the next Lycaenid is particularly special and one that is never seen in great numbers until this, and subsequent mornings at this special spot.
There are two species of the Sapphire here on the farm, The Straight-line Sapphire -
Iolaus silaris silaris and Trimen's Sapphire (Protea sapphire) -
Iolaus trimeni and both are exceptionally stunning insects with pure white undersides and brilliant blue shining upper sides. When flying, if you're lucky enough to spot one they are unmistakable with the white and blue flashing as they rapidly flit around trees or pass by on their way to some urgent business. Probably the easiest place to see Sapphires is to look for them on the hill tops for they are avid hill toppers and will be found up there most days, chasing each other with rapid flight and sitting up in the tree tops.
Of course to take a photo of a sapphire is not so easy if they are hill topping as they will rarely come within reach. So for photographing these butterflies, the best chance is in the morning when they come down for a drink on wet leaves or earth. It seems males come down earliest and then the females follow later in the morning usually after ten o'clock, although this is not a hard and fast rule.
Up until now the main area for spotting these butterflies was my vegetable patch. Spend enough time there and at some point through the morning a few individuals will descent and sit on a plant leaf to sip water. After a few minutes they will usually open their wings to catch some warmth but then if disturbed too much will rapidly leave over the surrounding trees. While drinking however, they can be touched and show very little response until they have finished their breakfast.
So back on Butterfly corner (which I mentioned a few posts ago when I saw around a 1000 butterflies mud puddling) the Playboys arrived first and a little later the sapphires arrived after the heat had increased a little. First I saw a brilliant blue flash in a tree about twenty metres away which was a Trimen's sapphire, wings spread, catching some sun. Next others started arriving, and like the playboys dropped fast into the damp grass where they started sipping dew. And then after a while they started opening their wings to catch some of the sun's rays. On the third morning I visited the corner, the sun was late because of cloud, but when the sun did arrive the butterflies arrived very fast and I saw the most sapphires I have seen in one spot. After a few minutes there were at least ten sitting around a small area and it was difficult to know where to look and what to photograph. Between these and numerous other species it was undoubtedly a red letter day for me.
Iolaus silarus silarus - Straight line sapphire female
Iolaus silarus silarus - Straight line sapphire
Iolaus silarus silarus - Straight line sapphire female
Iolaus trimeni - Trimens sapphire
Iolaus trimeni - Trimens sapphire
Iolaus trimeni - Trimens sapphire
Iolaus trimeni - Trimens sapphire
Iolaus trimeni - Trimens sapphire female
Iolaus trimeni - Trimens sapphire female
Iolaus trimeni - Trimens sapphire
The straight line and Trimens sapphire are fairly easy to tell apart from the undersides, the straight line sapphire having a transverse red line, often but not always straight, while the Trimen's sapphire has a black, sometimes broken, transverse line. The upper sides of the males are more difficult to tell apart but I believe my images are correct. The females upper sides are quite different with the Straight line sapphire female having far more red in the hind wing marginal band than the Trimen's, while both have more whitish blue on the upper sides than the males.
Ok That's it for now because as usual the electricity will cut very soon!
Regards from SA, Scott
. When I see all these species which you seem to be tripping over I wonder why I bother 
I am trying to motivate myself to post some LTB shots but you are not helping 
