Pairs of Ragged Wings
A butterfly calendar
When the rain stopped and the wind dropped and the sun peered from behind the clouds, this ragged butterfly came to the garden to lay her eggs. She was a Large Grass-yellow (Eurema hecabe, Pieridae) and her chosen host was a native Coffee Bush (Breynia, Phyllanthaceae) sown by birds. Her wings tattered and frayed, this was probably her last act. She carried it out diligently. Over twenty minutes, she circled the plant, selecting the best leaves on which to place her eggs. Then she drifted into the darkness beneath the trees.
Far North Queensland is in the final throes of the Wet Season. It has been a hard summer. In December, Severe Tropical Cyclone Jasper brought floods to Cairns and the coastal communities north to the Daintree region. At Cape Tribulation, almost two metres of rain fell in five days with more than 850 mm (33 in) arriving in one torrential blast. Rivers broke their banks and swept away roads and bridges. Three months later, some locations are still inaccessible.
We expect a lot of rain over the Wet Season — it does what it says on the tin — but not in such a short period.
Here in the NE tropics, we divide the year into two broad seasons, delineated by rainfall. Most of our annual precipitation falls between November and April (the Wet Season) when the monsoon sweeps down from…
