When was the last time you noticed a butterfly? The author Vladimir Nabokov, an avid lepidopterist, is reported to have told The New Yorker magazine in 1948: ‘it is astounding how little the ordinary person notices butterflies.’ As children, we looked upon them with wonder and awe when they floated through the garden, gossamer wings shimmering in the sunshine; a fleeting magic spell cast over us. By the time we reach middle age, most of us have long forgotten their power to entrance us. Adult life, with its mundane routines and endless responsibilities, robs us of our sense of wonder at small things.
One of my favourite butterflies is the Blue Tiger [Tirumala hamata]. My first Blue Tiger (back in 2021) was a tatty-looking specimen. It was suspended from the end of a palm frond, high above me in the upper canopy in a sheltered part of the local botanic gardens; with wings outstretched, basking in the dappled sunlight. Though it should have looked inky-black with sky-blue coloured splotches, it was virtually translucent; backlit as it was by the sun. I had been new to butterflies then, but I would not have mistaken it for any other butterfly. That’s because there’s no other butterfly like it here in Australia.
Part of the Nymphalidae family of butterflies, with a wingspan of about 72mm, the Blue Tiger is a well-known butterfly in North Queensland. Perhaps not in the league of a showy Ulysses [Papilio ulysses] or a Cairns Birdwing [Ornithoptera euphorion], but nonetheless, relatively well-known. This might be because you do occasionally see the odd one or two in sheltered sections of botanic gardens. But the most likely reason people know the Blue Tiger is because there have been occasions in the last ten years where large aggregations of Blue Tigers have been observed ‘over-wintering’ on Magnetic Island, just off the coast of Townsville. The term over-wintering basically means they’re having a rest.
In Queensland, Blue Tigers migrate inland and south from the tropics to the sub-tropics in Spring, and then begin to migrate north again from the sub-tropics back to the tropics in Autumn. Butterflies derive much of their energy from the sun. They need the warmth from the sun to be capable of flying. This means that in winter, there are less butterflies on the wing. After migrating to an over-wintering site, the Blue Tigers enter a phase referred to as diapause. It’s a bit like hibernation, although they can still feed and fly around; but they reduce their activities drastically. They pause reproduction altogether, and simply rest and wait for Winter to pass. It’s a clever adaptation these butterflies employ in order to survive.
The last mass aggregation on Magnetic Island of Blue Tigers (numbering in the tens of thousands) occurred in 2020, in a small parcel of land just back from the beach at Horseshoe Bay, signposted as a ‘wetlands rehabilitation’ site. It’s known to locals as the Butterfly Forest. I only began photographing and learning about butterflies in 2021, so I missed the 2020 migration.
…all this existed before, has always existed, but you were unaware. You didn’t see.
Sharman Apt Russell
Mass aggregations of Blue Tigers in Queensland is nothing new. In 1770, a wealthy young Englishman on board the ship Endeavour, described a large swarm of butterflies on the eastern coast of the continent that would later be named Australia. The young man was 25 year-old Joseph Banks, who would become the most celebrated naturalist in Britain.
Banks didn’t know the butterflies he’d seen were the Blue Tiger [Tirumala hamata hamata]. In his journal entry of 29 May 1770, he recorded his observations from a trip ashore at a place called Thirsty Sound1, where he saw ‘millions’ of butterflies he thought were Papilio similis, described by Linnaeus in 1758 (now Ideopsis similis).
…the air was for the space of 3 or 4 acres crowded with them to a wonderful degree: the eye could not be turned in any direction without seeing millions and yet every branch and twig was almost covered with those that sat still.
Joseph Banks
Since these large aggregations don’t happen all the time (the timing of these events depends on many factors), I’ve been hoping to see an aggregation of Blue Tigers now for several years. Each year we visit Magnetic Island at least once during the winter months hoping they’ll be there in the thousands (like they were in 2020). So far, luck has not been with me (though I did photograph a lovely Blue Tiger specimen nearby, on a walk around the Horseshoe Bay Lagoon, back in 2022). But in late March this year, a surprising thing happened. A Blue Tiger floated into my garden in suburban Townsville and perched on a spray of palm seeds. This was the first time a Blue Tiger had visited our backyard.
And then in late April we observed around a dozen or more Blue Tigers on the wing, during a walk from the Forts Junction carpark to Florence Bay, Magnetic Island. In mid-May we saw a lone Blue Tiger down at Pallarenda. It was sitting with wings outstretched, sunning itself while sipping the morning dew from the grass beneath it. Surely all these signs were pointing to the possibility of a mass migration to the Butterfly Forest this year?
Just last week I visited the Butterfly Forest, hoping to see Blue Tigers in good numbers. My spotting companion was my daughter, who had never been to the Butterfly Forest before. The Tigers were there, not in mass numbers, but during the course of our visit (perhaps an hour) we observed dozens of them! There were also Purple Crows [Euploea tulliolus] in good numbers too.
I’ll go back again in about a month and if they’re there in the thousands, I’ll post more photos here!
- This location is believed to have been close to what is now Stanage Bay, about 175 km north of Rockhampton, Queensland. (See Robinson & Vane-Wright). ↩︎
Sources & further reading
Common, I. F. B., & Waterhouse, D. F. (1981). Butterflies of Australia (Rev. ed). Angus & Robertson.
Banks, J., & Hooker, J. D. (1896). Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks : during Captain Cook’s first voyage in H.M.S. Endeavour in 1768-71 to Terra del Fuego, Otahite, New Zealand, Australia, the Dutch East Indies, etc.Macmillan.
Braby, M. F. (2016). The complete field guide to butterflies of Australia (Second edition.). CSIRO Publishing.
Robinson, J., & Vane-Wright, R. I. (2018). A specimen of Tirumala hamata hamata (Macleay, 1826) (Lepidoptera: Danainae) from Captain Cook’s first voyage. Journal of Natural History, 52(11–12), 687–712.
Russell, S. A. (2004). An obsession with butterflies : our long love affair with a singular insect. Arrow Books.
Scheermeyer, E. (1987). Seasonality or opportunism in reproduction of Australian danaine butterflies: Euploea core, E. tulliolus and Tirumala hamata (Lepidoptera). Griffith University.
Williams, W. (2020). The language of butterflies: how thieves, hoarders, scientists, and other obsessives unlocked the secrets of the world’s favorite insect. Black Inc.
Travels in the Sublime 