9001BUTTERFLIES

Parkes, NSW, May 2021 6                  CABBAGE WHITE                     Pieris rapae Range in se and sw Australia including eastern Tasmania. Accidentally introduced into Australia in the 1930s but now very common and widespread. Found in suburban gardens, farmlands and disturbed areas where the introduced laval food plants grow.Adults often occur in native bushland but rarely breed in these habitat, except in coastal sand dunes.  

Girrawen National Park, Queensland, May 2021 5                    MEADOW ARGUS                   Junonia villida Found all over Australia, except western Tasmania. Wide variety of habitat, particularly woodlands, open-woodlands and grassland, both in coastal and inland areas, also suburban gardens. Common and widespread. Photographed at Parkes, NSW January 2022  

Myall Botanic Gardens, Glenmorgan, Queensland, April 2021 4                   LARGE GRASS-YELLOW               Eurema hecabe Also called Common Grass-yellow. Across northern Australia. Found in wide variety of habitats, including edges of monsoon forests, savannah, woodland and grassland where laval plants grow. Very common and very widespread.  

North Stradbroke Island, April 2021 3                        VARIED EGGFLY                    H ypolimnas bolina Also called Common Eggfly. Found across northern Australia, east coast of Queensland and central west coast WA. Wide variety of habitat, preferring damp shaded areas and moist banks of creeks where the laval food plants grow in the ground layer in coastal in coastal and near coastal areas.                             

North Stradbroke Island, April 2021 2                 COMMON CROW               Euploea corinnia  Also known as Common Australian Crow and Oleander Butterfly. Across northern Australia and down east coast to Brisbane. Wide variety of habitats, including open forest and woodland in coastal and near coastal areas; monsoon forest (riparian vine thicket) along river courses, deep gorges or in moist gullies with rocky ranges in more inland areas, where Laval food plants grow, also suburban parks and gardens.  

Stradbroke Island, Queensland, April 2021 1                      BLUE TIGER                 Tirumala hamata         Found down east coast of Queensland and across north of Northern Territory and nw WA. In monsoon forests (vine thickets) and littoral rainforest where the laval food plants grow as large vines.  

  Well this is the beginning of a new adventure and a new collection, one I thought I would never be on. While I am still twitching birds, frogs, reptiles and mammals I received a field guide of Australian butterflies for my birthday. I am a novice. I don't know the name of a single butterfly. I now know, thanks to the back of the field guide, that there are at least 435 currently recognised species of butterflies in Australia.  So let the adventure begin.............