Common wanderer

Pareronia valeria

Well I never, what a pleasant surprise to land a shot of this little beauty. This striking pale blue butterfly has managed to elude my lens since I first spotted it last July. It teases me on a daily basis, virtually flapping its wings in my face, but always refusing to land within reach.

Today he landed on a chicken shit bloom (I kid you not - bunga tahi ayam), so named because that is what the plant smells like. As I have explained before, Indonesians name stuff like it is - frog is kodok kodok, doesn't take a genius to work out that one. I spotted the bloom a few days ago and was quite excited, as I know from past experience that the butterflies love it.

I nearly lost the shot, as a farmer wanted to squeeze by, but the butterfly circled around and returned to the only bloom in the area. It was in an awkward spot over the stream and was only giving me an end-on view, but for just half a second, he gave me a wing shot just before flitting off. With only one frame in the can, you can imagine my delight when I pulled it up on the screen.

Fortunately I had adjusted the EVA for the light color, otherwise the wing detail would have been washed out. I lose a bit at the black wing tips, but you cannot have everything. I could have processed some life back into the shadows, but that would have been a bit heavy handed. I decided to keep it simple.

You will also notice the pink pollen, just like on the BF blip two days ago. No surprise really, as the two butterflies are from the same genus of pareronia. No sign of the plant yet, but I think it is a priority mission now.

I spent ten hours yesterday, researching, sorting and classifying 582 butterfly shots into a proper set of folders, from family through genus and down to species for a few. Still a lot of work to do before the species count is in, but I reckon at least fifty and probably a lot more. Butterflies are a lot easier to research than spiders, but still anomalies are present, even with today's offering, which you will notice if you try a Google.

Dave