Or: how I became a leper
I was always interested in insects and associated gribblies from a young age. But, tragically, birding entered my life and all else was forgotten… swept away by my new-found love for Aves. Brief interest in the six-legged ones was rekindled by a certain Dr. Burwell, and we have pursued Odes together on and off for half a decade now. But there was another group lurking there, always in sight, but seldom in the forefront of my mind. The taxa is acrimoniously dismissed as ‘too popular’ by Dr. Burwell – ‘show-offs’. But Roger was and still is heavily into them… and eventually, I have fallen into their orbit as well. I dunno what CJB is on about either, there are plenty of plain brown dross-like animals in the group… what am I dribbling on about? LEPS.
Some famous species had drawn my attention before (Ulysses anyone?), and I (of course) had the field guide, but it wasn’t until some weird stuff started showing up in my yard at the end of last year that my interest was piqued. One drizzly arvo in December I took a break from the compy and had a look out into the yard. My neighbour’s Phaleria clerodendron was flowering and two little leps were whizzing around it, battling for space. I had flashes of bright blue and bright orange – what were these things? I grabbed my camera and waited for them to settle… soon after, I needed assistance from J to get back inside. I was crippled. When I recovered, I grabbed the field guide and had a look. The orange beast was Orange Palm Dart and the blue beast was Indigo Flash. Wow!
The next week, I got back from walking the hünds one morning to find a strange butterfly I’d never seen before just chilling in the grass. It was a Nymphalid; appropriately, a member of Tribe Vagrantini. But the field guide described its habitat as “… edges of rainforest, gallery forest and monsoon forest (riparian vine thicket)”. So what the hell was it doing in my backyard? Two days later, another ULTRA settled on the ghost net hanging from the Hills Hoist. It was a sign of things to come… the lep invasion was on.
Soon after, leper extraordinaire Mr P kindly provided me with a taxonomic spreadsheet of the Australian butterfly fauna (courtesy of the brilliant Colin Reid) and it was game over. My fate was sealed. Spreadsheets seem to trigger some primeval listing instinct in my brain… if some nerd has made a nice big list of species names I will want to start checking those boxes. It’s a compulsion. And having not been into leplisting before, I was getting lifers almost every day through December – madness! The next major development was the flowering of the Milettia pinnata in the front yard. The first new lep I noticed was ripping around at about 100 km/h, only briefly settling before jumping up and hooting away. I snagged some photos and got on the blower to Mr P. ‘I think there’s a Chrome Awl in my front yard mate’. His response? ‘I’ll be there after work’. Legend.
Sadly, Stu dipped that afternoon, but did come away with a brilliant consolation prize in Bright Cornelian. He returned a few days later (before work!) to have a nice cuppa and nail the Awl. Purple Cerulean also seems to like ‘The Tree’ and Stu and I have also visited other Milettia around the suburbs to find that this species, when flowering, is VERY popular with the leps. Agnew St in Seven Hills is chockers with them (Milettia), and also has the interesting Bennett’s Bushland Park to explore.
I’m really enjoying butterflies at the moment and they’re motivating me to learn more local plants, which is a good thing. Both Braby’s guide and Roger’s book are excellent in describing host-plant associations – it’s how I identified the Awl! So far, the back yard leplist is up to 29 and my life list is sitting on 73. There are easy ticks everywhere for me still so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to aim for 100 by the end of the season… watch this space.