30 September 2008
Dear Butterfly Net:
Environmental Education Camp, Mamre, 8 July 2008
Laurenda van Breda: "I presented a talk at Mamre to a group of learners aged from grade 7 and younger. It was a very cold day so unfortunately many learners did not attend this activity day set out for them. I spoke about why butterflies are insects, their differences to moths, the SABCA project, threats to butterflies and how they can help to protect them. I shared some interesting butterfly facts with them and they helped by reading some more facts to the rest of their friends. They were very quiet and shy but started to loosen up when it became more interactive. Once the presentation was complete and questions were answered, they got the opportunity to create there own butterfly by drawing, colouring-in and cutting them out, which they thoroughly enjoyed. Positive feed-back was received from the educator that the learners enjoyed the butterfly presentation."
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Kwa Nunu exhibition, Durban Natural Science Museum, 11-15 July 2008
SABCA had a stand at the Kwa Nunu exhibition which was aimed at school learners. the exhibition ran concurrently with the International Congress of Entomology in Durban, and included numerous other interactive exhibitions. Over 700 learners and 2000 members of the public attended the exhibition. Many thanks to Steve Woodhall for setting up the stand and to the LepSoc members who helped man the stand: Sandra Hanafey, Jenny Norman, Lindsey Gray, Fran Volker. Steve Woodhall's new book "What's that butterfly" was launched there.
CREW Plant Monitoring Day, Harmony Flats Reserve, Strand, 4 September 2008
Laurenda van Breda: "The first week of September was National Arbor Week and Thursday, 4th September, was National Plant Monitoring Day. Grade 7 learners from schools surrounding the Strand area, attended talks each day. Members that participated/presented for the week were CREW (Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers) from SANBI, nature conservationists from Helderberg and Harmony Flats Nature Reserves, a student from Kogelberg Nature Reserve, the Harmony Flats Working Group and SABCA. Presentations were given about Harmony Flats, its special veld type, the conservation thereof and a general discussion about butterflies and their conservation.
I presented a short talk on the 4th September to a group of 45 learners at the Harmony Flats Community Centre in Strand. I spoke about the SABCA project, threats to butterflies and how they can help to protect them. I also indicated the differences in butterfly families, their shapes and sizes and how to identify them. Luckily it was a warm day for our field trip to the reserve so there were butterflies to be seen and caught. The learners were divided into groups to monitor plants and my group to catch butterflies. We were equipped with some butterfly nets, a jar to observe them in and a data sheet to record species. The learners where very excited and enthusiastically started running around catching butterflies. They were quite handy with the nets and quickly got the hang of getting the butterflies safely into the jar for observation, before releasing them. A total of 21 butterflies were caught and 3 different species, namely: Painted lady (Vanessa cardui), Common Meadow White (Pontia helice helice) and Silver-Bottom Brown (Pseudonympha magus). CREW found a rare Spider Orchid which has not been seen on the reserve for the past two years. Everyone was very excited to see it. The day ended back at the community centre where the learners gave positive feedback on the day. All in all, the day was quite successful."
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Wildflower Show, Caledon, 12-15 September 2008
Andrew Morton: "After weeks of rain and storms it dawned cool and partly cloudy on Thursday. I was rather glad I couldn't collect as it took us most of the day to set up the stand and I had been itching to look for butterflies all week! All the staff were extremely helpful and friendly and there was a definite community spirit evident as the Caledoners cheerfully pieced together a grand display of a floral kingdom of vased flowers from the abundant plant-life of the Overberg.
We had a soft backing to our stand and prestik wasn't doing anything to keep our posters up, so Taryn got out her needle and thread and proceeded to sew the posters to the stand! The preparations had started days ago for us and we had produced a number of posters and displays for the occasion. We made posters for butterflies of the fynbos kingdom to go with ones of grassland and forest biomes I had borrowed from Jonathan Ball. We had one on collecting, studying and observing butterflies and one of ant-associations to explain Tony Brinkman's paper mache ant-straddled Chrysoritis caterpillar! We had print-outs of interesting facts & maps with butterflies from areas around the Western Cape. I had a drawer of butterflies found in the Caledon area and borrowed two lovely drawers representative of South African and Western Cape Butterflies from Harold Selb. We had some framed butterflies from my guesthouse, labelled foodplants with butterfly piccies and of course, some caterpillars to create interest amongst the kids (much to the disgust of their mommies!).
Friday was warm and Sunday was hot. The flower show was a huge success, as was our stand which was extremely busy for the whole weekend! I could see everyone was delighted to see our butterflies and most spent a considerable amount of time taking all the detail in. I believe the stand added a new dimension to the flower show and sparked interest in a lot of people, young and old. Everyone was facinated by the ant-associations and keen to learn which plants may bring butterflies (and their caterpillars!) to their gardens. A great compliment was the botanical society asking us if we would please come again next year!
We spent a few hours on Shaw's mountain pass on the Friday where we saw a lot of painted ladies and one T.thespis...We also did the hike above the botanical gardens on Saturday and once again saw hundreds of painted ladies heading east and one C.alpheus, but nothing more. Bad weather returned as we headed back to Cape Town on Sunday afternoon, leaving Laurenda from SABCA to (wo)man the stand for the afternoon and Monday morning.
A big thank you must go to my wife Taryn for all her hard work with layout, printing, laminating, designing, manning the stand etc! Thank you so much to the Beardwoods of Greyton for putting us up and showing us such warm hospitality for the duration of show!"
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SABCA evening, Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens, Roodepoort & LepSoc AGM, Onderstepoort, 19-21 September 2008
A public SABCA evening was held on 19 September at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens. Presentations included progress made with SABCA, moths by Hermann Staude and butterfly photography by Steve Woodhall. The annual LepSoc AGM followed on the weekend, which included progress made with SABCA as well as feedback given by provincial leaders on the field surveys.
Opening of Butterfly Garden, St Andrew's School for Girls, Johannesburg, 16 October 2008
In early 2007 the Natural Sciences teacher, Miss Emma Harrage, at St Andrew's Junior School, proposed the development of a nature or wildlife garden to assist with environmental and science education teaching. As St Andrew's is also an Eco-School the establishment of a garden like this would add to the ecological projects already undertaken at the School as well as giving the girls and the staff the opportunity to study nature in a practical way.
After raising funds from a Swim-a-thon in February 2008, the landscaping of the garden commenced in early May. Large expanses of bamboo, rubble and other materials were removed from an area adjacent to the Grade 0 playground. Indigenous plants were planted to attract a wide variety of South African butterflies. A small stream was planned as well as a pond and a small wetland feature. An outdoor teaching area was made from tree trunks and situated at the bottom of the garden where more formal lessons could take place.
The garden was landscaped by Sharl Bennie using a variety of recycled materials taken from the school workshop and the planning and planting of the garden were overseen by Kay Montgomery and Beverley Ballard-Tremeer.
The Butterfly Garden will be officially opened on Thursday 16 October 2008 and the staff and girls of St Andrew's School are looking forward to being able to do more practical and hands on ecological studies and conservation work in the future. We are also delighted that the addition of our Butterfly Garden will really establish St Andrew's School for Girls as an Eco School in South Africa. For further enquiries, please contact the school: 011 453 9408 (www.standrews.co.za).
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Data capture and processing is moving ahead. Laurenda & Lungelo have completed processing most of the museum data, and are now busy with digitising Alan Heath's collection as well as doing the last bit of Jonathan Ball's collection. Mariette Wheeler is helping out on an ad-hoc basis to ensure that processed data are given a final check before being uploaded into the SABCA database. This takes time. The number of records uploaded into the SABCA database remains at 22 521, many new records to be uploaded soon.
The virtual museum has now been running for one year, and just over 3500 records have been submitted during this time! Thank you to those of you who have made so many contributions!
SABCA would like to thank the following people for their contributions during the past three months - some of the most recent submissions have not been processed yet and thus have not been considered here (see previous newsletters for previous contributions):
As determined by our ID expert panel, here follow some of the most interesting records that have been recently received ... :
 Widespread but localized species of lycaenid. Tailed black-eye Leptomyrina hirundo Sharp I. C. & Sharp A. |
 Another good record from the southern side of our country. Eyed pansyJunonia orithya madagascariensis Immelman K.L. |
 Range extenstion to south. Yellow-banded acraea Hyalites cabira Immelman K.L. |
 Great specimen. Speckled red acraea Acraea violarum Braun K.P. |
 Not a common butterfly. False wanderer Pseudacraea eurytus imitator Immelman K.L. |
 Nice dry season form. Broad-bordered grass yellow Eurema brigitta brigitta Willis C.K. |
... and here are some of the nicest photos recently received:
 Queen purple tip Colotis regina De Klerk H. |
 False wandererPseudacraea eurytus imitator Immelman K.L. |
 Forest white Belenois zochalia zochalia Immelman K.L. |
 Palm-tree night-fighter Zophopetes dysmephila Sharp I. C. & Sharp A. |
 African veined white Belenois gidica abyssinica Immelman K.L. |
 Zulu shadefly Coenyra hebe Sharp I. C. & Sharp A. |
Remember the competition for the Virtual Museum! There are three categories:
A BIG thank you to the following sponsors for kindly sponsoring the prizes:
Africa Geographic, Struik Publishers, Lepidopterists' Society of Africa and JAH & Associates.
For more details on the competition, please click here.
Please click on the Public participation link to obtain easy-to-follow instructions on how photos should be submitted.
To enter and browse the Virtual Museum, please click on the Virtual Museum link.
The second season of SABCA's field surveys has begun. News on this will be distributed in December's Field Trip newsletter.
SABCA had its third Steering Committee meeting in August at the University of Cape Town. The weekend following the meeting SABCA held it's first training workshop for the conservation assessments. Editors and authors (about 15 of us) of the atlas and red data book attended a two-day workshop at UCT: on the first day training on IUCN red listing was given by SANBI, and on the second day training on how to use the online conservation assessment database on SABCA's website, so as to compile the species accounts for each of our butterfly species, was given by the ADU. It was an intense workshop, but alot was learnt, and a great dinner outing helped relax the information-loaded participants.
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Thank you all for your interest and participation!
Silvia Mecenero
SABCA Project Coordinator
Email:
Tel: 021 650 3426
[
Last updated: September 2008.
Page served: July 31, 2010, 10:18 +0200]
© Animal Demography Unit 2010
Department of Zoology -
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch 7701, South Africa
Fax number: (021) 650-3434 (best) or 689-7578 or 650-3726
Enquiries: Phone: (021) 650-3426; Email: sabca [at] adu [dot] org [dot] za
