The Suffolk Argus
Mimics, Monarchs and Miracles Hoping for at least 6 hours sunshine a day and temperatures between 17ºC - 24ºC we flew to Madeira early in November. What we got was a week of downpours, a dengue fever epidemic, floods, and roads all over the island blocked due to rock falls and landslides. It seemed Hurricane Sandy had stirred up a whole heap of trouble in the North Atlantic. Butterflies were the last thing on our mind but while sitting by the edge of a small lawn, during a brief break in the weather, my wife Ann suddenly leapt up and exclaimed “What the heck was that!” Flying up from a Poinsettia in flower then settling back again was a large, exotic looking, dark butterfly with white patches on all its four wings with a halo of iridescent violet around each patch. We then noticed two others with less distinct iridescent violet and I assumed, quite wrongly at the time, that they were females when, in fact, they were rather worn, past their best males. They settled frequently on Ann’s top and also settled on her outstretched hand as can be seen in the photographs (Page 2). She claimed a special connection with them, an intimacy which resulted in us being very upset when finally leaving them to come back to Suffolk. They were seen on most days of our stay in exactly the same spot. We were in a garden of exotic plants from all round the world mixed with indigenous plants from the native laurel forest - the Winter Garden of the Quinta Splendida Hotel in Canico, just East of Funchal.
Other butterflies, which they chased off or visa versa, were Red Admirals (not the endemic Indian Red Admiral), Small Whites, Long-tailed and Lang’s Short-tailed Blues. Also Monarchs Danaus plexippus, were very much in evidence; their gliding and tipping flight was a delight, almost soothing. We also saw caterpillars of Danaus plexippus feeding on milkweed which oozed milk the moment we gently broke a side stem. Once back in the UK and having negotiated our way past the new malfunctioning electronic passport machine at Gatwick, as difficult a task as any migrant butterfly crossing an ocean, we contacted Rob Parker. He kindly identified our photographs of the exotic looking butterflies as male Hypolimnas misippus, also named The Diadem or False Tiger and put us in touch with John Tennent and Torben Larsen, among the top specialists on Spain/Canaries/Madeira and African butterflies respectively. We were on a steep learning curve and, a page of emails later, were filled in on what’s known about them. Such can be the miracle of instant electronic communication quite different to our experience at Gatwick! Sadly, we saw no females which look completely different and mimic African Monarchs Danaus chrysippus commonly called Plain Tigers. They do this, so we learnt, because African Monarchs contain a poison to most predators so are avoided by them. In the same way the female Hypolimnas misippus gains a similar protection even though they don’t possess
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