Saturday 9 September 2017

Jezabels attracted to Fire Sprite

A warm spring day brought out many jezabel butterflies and our Grevillea Fire Sprite (cultivar) was providing a great source of nectar. Our most often sighted species is the Common Jezabel Delias nigrina but today we had quite a few Northern Jezabels getting into the action.

Female Northern Jezabel
 
Male Northern Jezabel
Male upper wings
The larvae of this Genus have mistletoe species as their main food source and we have many in the trees on the property to attract these butterflies.

The Northern Jezebel as their name suggests are more likely to be sighted in the north of Australia but they do range down as far as Sydney.

Common Jezebel female
 

2 comments:

  1. What a beautiful butterfly - so colourful. I like the flowers on the plant too - unusual.

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  2. Thank you again for your comments I have been very remiss in not getting on the blog and replying to comments.
    At present these butterflies are putting on quite a show as they float around from flower to flower to feed and then a bit of more determined flight chasing a potential mate.

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