Yesterday, I saw a butterfly in the garden, looking rather like an Imperial White, but much smaller. I kept an eye on it until it landed and I saw then that it was the Caper White (Anaphaeis java). This is an interesting butterfly. It feeds its caterpillars only on various species of Capparis (Capers) and the Australian species only grow in the drier interior of the continent, so they are not normally seen in our area.
Some years the odd butterfly may appear, I saw one in 1993 and one in 1996. Some years however they have enormous eruptions (good year for capers perhaps) and they can turn up in numbers alll over the south-east of Victoria. Such a year occurred in 1998, when I saw them almost daily everywhere I went.
I hadn't seen one at all since then until yesterday.
The butterfly kept coming back to our Honesty plant, so I rushed in to get my camera and here is the result:
