It’s been almost 5 months since I last updated this website. This is partly because the lousy weather has restricted my opportunities to get out looking for butterflies, and partly because life gets in the way and I simply haven’t had the time. However, the recent period of absolutely awful weather here, especially on weekends, has given me the opportunity to do a an overhaul of the website.
The changes I’ve made might not be all that obvious, but behind the scenes I’ve completely changed how the website hangs together. Excuse me if I lapse into geek-speak here… A few years ago I decided to migrate my website to WordPress, but I really didn’t want to spend the time to load thousands of photos into WordPress’ media Library, or convert hundreds of HTML pages to WordPress pages. So what I did was to wrap WordPress around my old website. I created one empty web page to act as an entry point for my photo Gallery; when a menu or any other page on the site linked to a species page it would actually direct to that Gallery page, with the species name being passed as a URL parameter. I embedded some Javascript in the Gallery page to unpack the URL, identify the species, and then insert an IFRAME into the empty page, with the content of that IFRAME being the URL of my old HTML page for that species.
I was quite happy with this solution, despite the fact that search engines such as Google were never able to index the hundreds of individual species pages. I eventually decided to change things when I started using a larger monitor with higher resolution; the thumbnail pictures on each species page now looked very small (they looked fine on my little laptop screen). I noticed that the 8 sample photos at the bottom of the website’s front page looked rather nice on that monitor, so I played around with WordPress image galleries and decided to change all my thumbnail listings to use them. I therefore undertook the laborious task of converting each species page to WordPress, and I have to admit I really like how the result looks on my desktop monitor. Doing this has also improved the website’s Search Engine Optimisation, so that’s an added bonus.
End Geek Mode.
As well as all the behind-the-scenes changes I have also added a number of photos I’ve taken since my last update. My personal highlight was getting a shot of a male and female Acrodipsas aurata (Golden Ant-blue) sitting next to each other, both with their wings partly open to display their contrasting wing colours.
Photo Gallery Updates
- Euploea corinna (Common Crow)
- Tisiphone abeona (Varied Swordgrass Brown)
- Geitoneura klugii (Marbled Xenica)
- Acrodipsas aurata (Golden Ant-blue)
- Paralucia aurifera (Bright Copper)
- Jalmenus ictinus (Stencilled Hairstreak)
- Jalmenus evagoras (Imperial Hairstreak)
- Erina hyacinthina (Varied Dusky-blue)
- Candalides xanthospilos (Yellow-spotted Blue)
- Candalides heathi (Rayed Blue)
- Erysichton lineatus (Hairy Line-Blue)
- Theclinesthes sulpitius (Samphire Blue)
- Lampides boeticus (Long-tailed Pea-blue)
- Zizina otis (Common Grass-blue)
- Trapezites phigalioides (Montane Ochre)
- Trapezites symmomus (Splendid Ochre)
- Timoconia peron (Dingy Skipper)
- Timoconia flammeata (Bright Shield-skipper
- Hesperilla donnysa (Varied Sedge-skipper)
- Hesperilla trimaculata (Large Brown Skipper)
- Mesodina aeluropis (Montane Iris-skipper)
- Taractrocera papyria (White-banded Grass-dart)
- Telicota ancilla (Green Darter)
- Cephrenes augiades (Orange Palm Dart)
Hi Martin,
Lovely to see your new photos- some absolute beauties. Love the Blue Triangle at the top of the page – I’d love to see one of them.
Pity you’ve had such poor weather but you have so many butterflies to choose from !!
I’m still hoping to have a trip over to butterfly – maybe at the end of next year (2023) now that travel is opening back up again. Please keep posting your photos as every time I see one of your updates it renews my determination to come and see a few of them first hand.
Cheers
Colin
Hi Colin – you can often see Blue Triangles around Sydney, though they’re usually on the move so photo opportunities are few and far between. Hopefully I can do more updates in the not too distant future, though that does depend on the weather – the forecast for the coming weekend is lousy (just for a change!).
cheers
Martin
Hi Martin. I found your (might I say excellent) website when I was searching to identify a very pretty little butterfly I saw in the garden this morning. I only saw its under side so had no clue how to enter adequate descriptions on Google to help me to identify it. By chance, I selected your website from the search results and lo and behold – I think the little beauty on your top banner is The One!! It was a small butterfly, white underneath with black and turquoise “trim”. I don’t recall ever seeing one in my garden before. Mind you, butterflies are not plentiful in my garden ever. I don’t grow fancy flowers. My yard is largely native callistemons, grevilleas and wattles and was decimated in the drought and heat of 2019/2020. Restoration is a work in progress. I would be very pleased if you could let me know the name of that banner butterfly. Thank you. (And I love your work.)
Hi Pam – thanks for your kind words about my website.
The butterfly on the site’s front page is a Small Green-banded Blue (Psychonotis caelius) : https://www.purvision.com/psychonotis-caelius/.
I hope your garden recovers fully from the drought, and hopefully you get more Small Green-banded Blues showing up!
regards
Martin
Thanks, Martin. Very happy to have a name for my little visitor. Hope I do see another, or even better many others.