I was wandering round the garden in my dressing-gown yesterday morning when a little butterfly fluttered past. I watched, hoping it would land and it did eventually, but on a leaf of the Blackwood tree about 8 feet up. I couldn.t see it much from in the garden and had to wander out into the firebreak behind the garden to get a look. It was small, but brightly coloured and I could tell it was something unfamiliar to me. I hurried inside and got my book and easily identified it as a Victorian Hairstreak Pseudalmenus chlorinda zephyrus. This is not a common butterfly and I had never seen one before and I was thrilled to see it in our garden. It becomes the 26th species of butterfly to visit our garden. I quickly put the telephoto lens on my new digital camera and went back to the firebreak and searched (somewhat optimistically I thought) for the butterfly where I had seen it before. I couldn't see any sign of it and was just going to give up, when it opened its wings wide and I saw it, still where I had first seen it. The book told me that it's caterpillars feed mainly on Blackwood Acacia melanoxylon, so maybe the reason it stayed in one place was that it might have been laying eggs on the Blackwood. Enough of my rambling, here are the pictures I managed to get. The digital camera makes my 300 mm lens, effectively 450 mm, otherwise these would have been rather distant shots.
