Autumn 2026
I haven’t had a great deal of luck around Sydney since I returned from Cairns in February. March and April are often good butterflying months for me, but this year several of my outings were extremely unproductive. There was one very notable exception…
On 29th March I went out to Mount Annan Botanic Garden in the hope of getting shots of female Satin Azures (Ogyris amaryllis). I’d taken several decent amaryllis photos there in April 2025 but most of those were of males and I needed more females.
At first all I saw were males; I’ve noticed a few times now that amaryllis females don’t start showing themselves until an hour or so later than the males. Eventually the females appeared, and by this time the colony was very active with dozens of these Azures on the wing. They flew very rapidly but settled frequently; the difficult part was following their flight so as to be able to see where they landed. Much of the time their perches were too high for me, but every now and then one would settle low enough for me to be able to get some rather nice photos – once I’d switched from my macro lens to my 300mm.
New species
A recent paper by Michael Braby has resulted in the Yellow Sand-skipper (Croitana croites) being split. Previously the inland population was known as the ‘pale form’ whilst those on the coast were ‘dark form’; with this reclassification the inland form continues to be known as C. croites, with the common name of Pale Sand-skipper, whilst the coastal version being named C. flavescens. Since this is the more yellow of the two species it retains the old common name of Yellow Sand-skipper. I photographed both species during my 2016 trip to Western Australia; several specimens inland at Quairading, followed a few days later by one quickly snatched shot on the coast at Port Kennedy.
My second new species is the Shining Pencil-blue (Eirmocides helenita). I had originally added helenita to my website after photographing them at Atherton in April 2011, but upon the publication of a paper splitting the species the Wet Tropics population was reclassified as the Green Pencil-blue (E. callainus), with the Iron Range version being helenita. Recently I was looking through the photos I took on my November 2013 trip to the Iron Range I noticed that I had a photo of helenita that I hadn’t used; I therefore created a page for it and upped my species count to 328.
Photo Gallery Updates
New species : Yellow Sand-skipper (Croitana flavescens)
New species : Shining Pencil-blue (Eirmocides helenita)
I’ve also added photos to the following species pages:
Geitoneura acantha (Ringed Xenica)
Ogyris amaryllis (Satin Azure)
Nacaduba biocellata (Two-spotted Line-blue)
Trapezites eliena (Orange Ochre)
Dispar compacta (Barred Skipper)
Toxidia parvula (Banded Grass-skipper)
Timoconia peron (Dingy Skipper)
Elodina angulipennis (Southern Pearl-white)
Contacts page
Whilst working on the November 2023 update I tested out my Contacts page and found that my email form is no longer working. I don’t know why it broke or when it happened, so if you’ve tried contacting me that way and received no reply, please accept my apologies.
I had a go at fixing it but didn’t get it working. In the meantime I’ve replaced the form with links to my Facebook and Instagram, as it should be possible to contact me that way instead.