BUTTERFLY CONSERVATION SA INC. NEWSLETTER No. 63: January 2018 HAVE YOU SEEN THESE BUTTERFLIES? IN THIS ISSUE Polyura sempronius the Tailed Emperor butterfly and • Have you seen these butterflies? • Hindmarsh Island Revegeta- Lucia limbaria the Chequered Copper butterfly tion, Karen’s journey We have recently received reports of the tailed emperor butterfly • Displays - help needed Polyura sampronius at Barmera and also near the University of Ad- • Notes elaide and River Torrens where they have been found on the caterpillar • Moth Book - plant images • A poem: Australian Butterflies host plant eastern states trees. • What’s for Sale • FACT SHEET Lucia limbaria In addition we have recently received reports of the Chequered Copper • FACT SHEET Polyura butterfly Lucia limbaria at Salisbury, Hackham and Clare. sempronious • Facts about Acacias The Discovery Centre Manager at the South Australian Museum, Mike • Bushfoods Australia Gemmell, has agreed to work with Butterfly Conservation by recording • Wattleseed sightings of these two butterfly species. • Public Talks program 2018 • Richard Glatz talk The tailed emperor is an eastern states species and was first sighted • Karin Nordström talk in South Australia in the early 1970’s. It has subsequently been found • Michael Kokkinn talk around the Unley, Hawthorn and Fullarton areas so information on • Notes and Diary Dates other locations would be appreciated. The chequered copper butterfly had not been seen on the Adelaide plains for over 60 years when a colony was discovered on the former Victoria Park racecourse in an area where the hostplant Oxalis peren- nans grows. It was subsequently discovered in the south parklands. These colonies are surviving and are the subject of a management plan by the Adelaide City Council. in consultation with members of BCSA. If you see either of these two species, please contact the Discovery Centre at the South Australian Museum and include the locality, date, time and any other information. Email [email protected] or phone +61 8 8207 7404. See centre pages for fact sheets of these two species. Top: Lucia limbaria underside LFHunt; Below: Polyura sempronius underside RHFisher and left larvae LFHunt. BUTTERFLY CONSERVATION SA. INC. Membership enquiries: [email protected] or online: www.but- terflyconservationsa.net.au/product/become-a-member/ Membership payments ($10pa - plus $10 surcharge for posted newsletters): to Treasurer: C/- South Australian Museum, North Terrace, ADELAIDE. 5000. Cheques to be made out to: Butterfly Conservation SA Inc. EFT details: BSB 633-000 Account No:152785838 Bank: Bendigo Bank. Account Name: Butterfly Conservation SA Inc. Please email Treasurer if paying by direct debit: [email protected] with name, amount and item. BUTTERFLY CONSERVATION NEWSLETTER Number 63 January 2018. 2 HINDMARSH ISLAND PROPERTY REVEGETATION - KAREN’S JOURNEY In March 2010 my husband Chris and I bought 32 hectares of that is around us. We wanted to encourage wildlife to land on the southern central part of Hindmarsh Island. The come in and be able to use the vegetation as habitat by property had been part of a much larger dairy farm settled looking at the structure and function of the indigenous in 1856 and continuously used for grazing and cropping since plants we were planting. A large part of this was an then. integrated pest management approach to weed control to allow natural recruitment of indigenous plants rather than We found ourselves with hectares of weeds on the having to put in a large number of new plants each year. property and almost no indigenous vegetation but we were adjacent to a number of other properties that were Thus began a very interesting journey that, at its heart, being revegetated by the local Landcare Group and very uses sustainability principles and processes. One of close to a number of large coastal reserves including the the main fallacies I discovered that seems to be widely Coorong National Park. accepted is the emphasis on output rather than outcomes. For example, success of these types of projects is often Hindmarsh Island has been severely over cleared for measured on how many trees are planted, not on how agricultural since first settlement in the early 1840s. many trees actually survive and thrive in the long term Nearly all the remaining woodlands on the Island were and really should those trees have even been planted in cut to feed the steam boilers of riverboats and flour mills the first place? Would it not have been better and more from the 1850s. appropriate to plant understorey on that site instead? We immediately set out to intensively Fungi are appearing on many So we added adaptive management to revegetate half of our block and put of the sites. One of the most our sustainability criteria. Rather than shelter belts around the other half to important lessons I have getting stuck in a fixed management connect our revegetation efforts with discovered after over 40 years plan we have “fine tweaked” what adjacent properties. We wanted to in working in agriculture, we do to accommodate opportunities discover ways of doing this in the most horticulture and natural resource as they show up and then fit them sustainable, least time consuming, management is the importance into the sustainability model of minimal cost and fastest way possible. of connectivity between plant the 4 Rs, refuse, reduce, reuse and species particularly when recycle; For example I was watching Our desire was to enjoy this project planting indigenous plants and tonnes of mulch being driven by in our lifetime. We did not accept the that plants are the foundation truck into Goolwa after contractors local dire predictions of how difficult on which all other organisms hired by Hindmarsh Island Landcare this country was to grow anything in, depend. had removed woody weeds on their and that it would take 20 years or more planting sites on the Island (mostly to get good ecological site restoration non-indigenous native plants like outcomes. We have always been interested in the wildlife Leptospermum laevigatum that had become feral Photos: Top left: 2012 plantings, photo right same site in Sept. 2016.. Above: 5000 plants, photo taken in 2015. Right: same site in 2017. BUTTERFLY CONSERVATION NEWSLETTER Number 63 January 2018. 3 on the Island, a lesson to be learned in planting non- plantings were put in by a planting team that did not indigenous plants!).The trucks were coming past our gate scalp and mulch and results were much poorer and weed and I innocently said to Landcare “dump it on our place control has been a major challenge despite similar climatic instead”; about 200 tonnes later they finally stopped! I conditions (and in fact much higher rainfall in 2016). have now moved most of this mulch around newly planted Mulched areas on very poor low nutrient sands on the tubestock which is mostly small understorey plants and we sand dune areas have shown vastly accelerated growth now have bark mulch paths on many of our planting sites. rates, particularly of sheoaks, this has been done in conjunction with extensive weed control. My preference is for fast ground up revegetation. What We also don’t burn any pruning’s. We have laid wood I did was plant as wide a variety of locally indigenous across planting sites to provide perching opportunities plant species as possible, (usually over 100 species in one for raptors and other birds, for lizard habitat and soil planting). The vast majority of which is understorey under stabilisation and of course places for fungi to grow and 1 metre and containing many grass species. We scalped connect with plant roots. Our latest project has been to each planting hole and each plant has a core flute guard. create reptile “houses” in the revegetation areas from Then mulch was placed around each guard. Survival rates broken pavers found on the property. were over 95%, considerably higher than local survival We are nearly eight years into this project, 56,000 locally rates (between 33% and 57% on survival trials conducted indigenous plants of approximately 180 species have on the planting sites on the island by the local LAP Board). now been planted and we add new species and natural recruitment adds many more hundreds of additional My “proof of concept trial” was 5000 plants put in one plants each year as well. area in 2015. The results were outstanding! Our 2016 Karen Lane Some members may recall a visit to Karen and Chris Lane‘s property ONCE AGAIN WE ARE ASKING FOR YOUR HELP a couple of year ago. Members of BCSA have again been invited to WITH OUR BCSA DISPLAY STALLS visit later in the year to see the progress of this remarkable project. Information in the next newsletter and/or via email. AUSTRALIAN PLANTS SOCIETY Sat. 21st - Sun. 22nd April 2018 CAPER WHITE Belenois java Sat. 10.00 - 5.00, Sun 10.00 - 4.00 Wayville Showgrounds SOPHIE’S PATCH (Easter) Sat 31st Mar - Mon 2nd April 2018 10 am – 4:30 pm Open Garden at Hamlyn Cottage 394 Springs Rd, Mt Barker Springs Please contact Gil Hollamby Ph: 85246873 or via email to: [email protected] if you can assist on these two BCSA stalls. THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING MEMBERS who helped out at the Australian Plants Society October show on the BCSA stand. Brett Oakes Gerry Butler Jan Forrest Andrew Walters Helen Pryor Pam Barnett The Caper white butterflies Belenois java are usually out and about in Nov/Dec. Thanks to Dawn Borchardt for these photos of the yellow form. MOTHING ABOUT - TRIVIAL BITS Contribution from David Keane BCSA DISPLAY AT Mt.PLEASANT SHOW Moth: are two characters in Shakespeare’s plays of 1598: 1.