Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: pretty African butterfly I saw today, 0 by kennedyh

kennedyh wrote:
Isn't it nice when you get a close look at an uncommon visitor! Your butterfly is incredibly like (and closely related to) one of our Australian butterflies, the Caper White Anaphaeis java. This butterfly lives in the dry heart of Australia, where it feeds its caterpillars exclusively on Caper bushes (Capparis species). In some years they have major population explosions and turn up in numbers outside their normal range. Back in 1993, I found this one sitting on the ground on a track in Morwell National Park near here and it stayed very still enabling me to get a real close-up picture. That was the only one I saw that year, but in 1997 we had a major invasion of them and there were Caper White's everywhere, including visitors to our garden. There are no caper bushes around here however, so they don't stay and breed and I haven't seen a single one since that year!