Dark Moons

Forest and Bird, Issue 292, 1 May 1999, Page 3

Dark Moons

I was very pleased to find pictures of visiting butterflies in the February number of Forest e Bird, but frankly I am puzzled by the black butterfly being named blue moon. In the 1950s I lived near the port in New Plymouth and early one summer a bright blue butterfly, about the size of a monarch appeared in the garden. I was told

this was a female blue moon and frequently it was joined by a rather smaller and darker male. I do not recall the markings but am sure it was not black. During the summer the butterflies apparently bred, as they were more numerous by autumn and I very much hoped they had come to stay. However they died off in the winter and I have never seen them since. At the time I had never heard of these large blue butterflies or of the name blue moon which suited them so well. So if, as I assumed, they had come over from Australia, I find it hard to see how that name has become attached to a black butterfly, beautiful as it evidently is. Edward Hill, Wellington — The blue moon in our February 99 issue was a male, with white ‘moons’ fringed with blue on its wings; the female is distinguished by two orange-tinted flashes. Our author Peter Maddison also provided notes on the blue tiger (as pictured), another Australian butterfly of about the same size which is only rarely reported here, though there was an invasion in 1995.