Buoyed by my success on Spring Mountain, I found myself repeatedly drawn to hilltops over the last few weeks of March, primarily chasing leps but also enjoying the health benefits associated with hauling myself uphill for extended time periods. From the ides of March to the 2nd of April I visited Mt Greville, Mt Coochin, Spring Mountain (again) and Flinders Peak. The effort paid off handsomely – I got a bunch of new species, including three Acrodipsas. I’d never seen an Ant-blue before my hilltop blitz! More on them and all the others below…
Mt Greville
I’d been thinking about Greville for a while as it sits in a fairly prominent location that is easily visible from the highway out to Warwick, and is also visible from Frog Buttress, Flinders Peak etc. I’d only been there once bouldering with Tom and Ben way back in the day and hadn’t been to the summit. I couldn’t remember anything about the mountain, but I knew it supported several endemic plants and should provide a good hilltop for butterflies. I managed to find some spare time and zipped out there on a Sunday arvo at the start of March.
There are a few ways up to the summit but I picked the one that I hoped would be the most time-efficient: straight up the south-east ridge. This was really fun, with some exposed slabby sections that reminded me of Girraween. You gain height pretty quickly and before too long I had some nice views of Mt Moon behind me. On the slabs I found my first rare for the day: Comesperma breviflorum, which is Near Threatened in Queensland. Soon afterwards, I was beset by a swarm of Grevillea linsmithii (Endangered) in the open eucalypt woodland near the summit. Nice!
At the fairly underwhelming summit I touched the cairn and had a brief sit down to get my breath back and absorb some calories. Then it was time to look for leps. There was a fair bit of activity, with several individuals of several species engaging in territorial dogfighting through the treetops. A very excitable Orange Ochre and a similarly fired up Dingy Grass-skipper were bullying everyone else in the lower canopy, including some Large Trident-blues. A couple of Trident Pencil-blues were up a bit higher (the common names for this little branch of the evolutionary tree are frustratingly similar) but the first intriguing butterfly I saw was a tiny skipper zipping around the summit cairn. I took a heap of photos of this beast, which I thought looked quite interesting – some help from Braden once I got home led to the ID of Wide-brand Sedge-skipper (Hesperilla crypsigramma). It was only the third one I’d ever seen. A couple of years ago I snagged the first record of this species for iNat, so it was quite nice to be reunited with xir.
Soon after this, I noticed a couple of reddish-looking beasts in the canopy. I couldn’t get a good look at them until I climbed a little tree – this strategy paid off when I managed to get some photos confirming them as Moonlight Jewel (Hypochrysops delicia). Beauty! Another Hypochrysops under the belt… from my vantage point some 10 m off the ground I then managed to snap a few photos (one-handed) of an intriguing small Lycaenid and a big skipper that were both confining themselves to the upper canopy. I don’t think they would have been visible from the ground at all. Again, I had to wait until I got home to get an ID on these critters with some help from iNat pals – the little guy ended up being a Small Ant-blue (Acrodipsas myrmecophila). This was the lep highlight of the day for me (I’d been secretly hoping for an Ant-blue). It was also the first iNat record of the species for Queensland! A text from Braden alerted me to the gripping nature of my find :^)
The big skipper ended up being Yellow Grass Skipper (Toxidia xanthomera), which was also a leplifer for me. The lesson was learned – always climb trees on hilltops!
The afternoon wore on and the Moonlight Jewels gradually came lower down, which gave me some fantastic binocular views. A Bright Cornelian showed up around 1430 and started smashing everyone; I took this as my cue to start heading downhill. On the way down I found some more cool plants, including Bulbophyllum exiguum and the Mt Greville Phebalium (Leionema gracile) – what a monster. Instead of retracing my steps, I peeled right into the alarmingly steep Palm Gorge, connecting with Ringed Xenica as I did so. Wow – the Palm Gorge was stunning (the ferns in the title image are from the head of the gulch). A steep-sided canyon filled with rainforest, it took me down the mountain in basically a straight line, dropping 500 m of elevation in about 600 m of horizontal travel… steep as!
I hopped back in the car and headed home to process my photos in a frenzy, updating my leplist as I went. Mt Greville helped me to haul in a total of 4 leplifers and 3 rare plants. A good spot! I shall return in spring…
Mt Coochin
A couple of weekends later, I was up at Woodfordia for the Conservatree weekend. We ended up pulling out about 200 kg of Singapore Daisy from the creek behind the Kremlin – it is truly hideous stuff but our little crew worked well together. Earlier that day I had used a couple of hours to bag the nearby summit of Mt Coochin, the peak (or Glasshouse ‘Mountain’) immediately north of the ultra-popular Mt Ngungun. It was a steep little climb to the western peak and I was sweating profusely by the time I got up there. There were heaps of Dusky-blues zipping around, as well as the seemingly ever-present Dingy Grass-skipper… a supporting cast of Glasswings and the occasional Dainty Swallowtail drifted aimlessly about as I had a look through the crowds in search of something interesting. A strange-looking little lep landed right in front of me and I didn’t recognise it at first… after snapping some quick photos I had a look at the butterfly app. It was my final Dusky-blue – the elusive Blotched beast.
I made my way through the Ngungun May Bushes (Leptospermum luehmanii) that covered the hilltop with one eye always to the sky. I found a Tawny Coster and then noticed a little butterfly slowly flutter up and down at the top of a tree slightly downslope. I could see it well enough in my bins to know it was likely an Ant-blue but had no idea which one it was. Luckily, a nearby tree allowed me access into the canopy again :^) From here I had a much better view and managed to nail some diagnostic images… my second Ant-blue loomed in the view finder.
I didn’t have much more time, and wanted to see the eastern peak too so I packed up and ran the nice clear rocky ridge down towards the gulch. A quick huff and a few puffs and I was standing atop the east peak looking west. It was now really time to go and again I crossed the valley before folding down the northern side of the mountain and back to my car below. A nice alternative to Ngungun for the keen lepper – nowhere near as crowded. The terrain on the traverse between the two peaks also feels like you’re up one of the big mountains in the Scenic Rim. A good value hilltop!
Return to Spring Mountain
By this stage I was becoming addicted to Acrodipsas… I did some research and saw that at Spring Mountain last year Braden had gotten Black-veined and Bronze Ant-blues in the first week of April. The timing seemed ok to have a crack, so I headed back up there. A positive sign was the lack of 30 knot winds when I got to the hilltop, and there was a lot of action when I first arrived. As I was getting my bearings, however, most leps scarpered. Bugger! After getting tick bombed the week before I had applied some insect repellent to my legs… could they sniff it out, or was it just a coincidence? I refused to give in – it had taken me an hour or so to get up there – and so continued to do laps of the available veg.
There were a couple of big skippers moving at warp speed above the tallest trees – I couldn’t get anything on them from ground level so again resorted to climbing partway into the canopy myself. I only got crappy pictures of these beasts, but it was enough to tell that they were Grey Swifts. Whilst airborne, I noticed a tiny blue behaving in a very suspicious manner – I got a couple of blurry photos before he changed perch and I was agitated when I saw that it was another Acrodipsas! But which one? I returned to the ground and scanned the top of the tallest tree until I found him again, perched head down. I took a couple of hundred photos of him over the next 45 minutes or so before watching him unceremoniously leave the hilltop and zoom over the edge of the cliff into oblivion. While trying continuously to get better photos of him, a couple of Jewels (Moonlight and Fiery) had also shown themselves – it wasn’t a bad haul really, despite the gloomy weather that had moved in. I left soon after the Ant-blue and again ran down to the car.
At home, I pored through the images until I found one that (to my eye at least) was diagnostic – I could see the FW underside postmedian band split at M3. Thank the heavens.
Flinders Peak
The next day I was off to Flinders to complete my hilltopping blitz… I passed only a couple of people on the way up and was happy to see the feral grasses had been snipped back from the track verges. It was a sweatfest as usual but I got up in just under an hour and started togging straight away. Sadly, this was the first hilltop I visited without getting a lifer… great pain. As a consolation I managed to get far better views of Grey Swift and Barred Skipper. It’s always nice to be up in the montane environs anyway, regardless of what’s about. The run down the north-west ridge was hot as hell facing into the sun the whole way but a nice swim in the creek behind the carpark helped drop my core temp before heading home.
I’ve just started a new job so my blogging time might be limited for a little bit… hopefully I have some interesting field trips coming up. Farewell for now.
