Telchinia encedon - (1) -

This is one of our most common butterflies, and I have been putting off posting it.
It has different forms, some of which I have posted here.
The reddish ochre form (fulva) is our most common form, and mimics the African Monarch. The buff form is fumosa (second and third above, the same individual.) Lastly the white is form lycoides,
Again the species has been moved from the genus Papilio (Linnaeus 1758) to Acraea (Doubleday 1848), to Hyalites (Doubleday 1848) now Telchinia (Hubner 1819.)
See also Telchinia the genus. and Telchinia the next post.

    

Cigaritis natalensis

An elderly Natal Bar in the garden. What wonderful silvery scales.

There are three spp. in our area, I have only one other, the Mozambique Bar.

The genus was originally described as Aphnaeus natalensis Westwood, 1851. It spent some time recently as Spindasis, but now to Cigaritis. I have put in the engraving by Hewitson that is in Doubleday's and Westwood's book, (attributed to the former?)
 



 

Charaxes varanes

The Pearl Charaxes was another large butterfly that was quite common in our garden. The upper-side is attractive, the underside cryptic making it quite well camouflaged. On a few occasions I have found it feeding on dog scat, apparantly common in Charaxes.
It is also fond tree sap, here (bottom) stealing sap from a Fruit Chafer beetle, Pachnoda sinuata.
 

Tuxentius calice

(I have added three more photograps, all from Bisley NR.)

The White Pie. The top butterfly was from Bisley where it can usually be found, the bottom from the KZN-NBG where it is less common than the Black Pie. It shares the same food plant with the Black pie and can be distinguished from it by the hind wing underside markings (see T. melaena.)

Hypolycaena buxtoni

I have only two records of Buxtons Hairtail. The first was from Ferncliffe (the top three photographs.) The secoond from home. I couldn't resist putting the bottom photograph in: the one that nearly got away. It was sufficient to show she has the brown upper-side markings of the female, as does the one from Ferncliffe. What amazingly long tails!

 

Protogoniomorpha parhassus

The Common Mother-of-pearl.
This poor butterfly has been shunted backward and forth between the genera Salamis and Protogoniomorpha.
It was an occasional visitor to our garden, usually an older battle scarred individual. Perhaps I missed it, as it appears to be quite well camouflaged.
Wahlberg and Brower put this genus as close to the Junonia as it is to the Salamis.
 

Tarucus sybaris

The Dotted Blue is similar, and fairly closely related to both the Tuxentius (Melaena and calice), and Zintha hinza, all which share the food plant Zyziphus mucronata. It is however, more uniformly polka-dotted.

I had forgotten that I have already posted this butterfly.