What did we see?On returning home, I gush about them to anyone who will listen; giving long, impassioned descriptions of the sheer numbers on that magical afternoon. I also spend fruitless hours online, hoping to find information about similar gatherings of butterflies in Australia. I contact the local University of New England for a more professional, informed understanding of what we witnessed. The university refers me to butterfly enthusiasts, Carol and Trevor Deane in Dorrigo.

Craig and I drive to the Deane’s conservation property on the edge of the plateau. It is a beautiful block of land surrounded by rainforest and rich in butterfly food plants. Sitting on their back deck, with cups of tea and biscuits at hand, we relate our story in more detail. They ask simple straightforward questions that I can barely answer. My lack of observational skills is appalling. I am embarrassed.

Did we get any photos? Well no, the butterflies were small and agile and Craig only had a wide-angle lens. I explain how my attention was drawn to the butterflies when I saw one caught in a spider’s web. Trevor asks: did you get the wings out of the web for identification? I never thought of doing that. He explains how it would be helpful if we could pinpoint the particular butterfly and he hands me his butterfly field guide. It is packed with a bewildering range of gold brown butterflies with distinctive spot patterns. Just one small spot can mean a different species. We struggle to choose any of them.*

The pair describe what we saw as a butterfly migration, a phenomenon they say is not well understood and rarely studied. Perhaps

the most famous migrating butterfly is the Monarch butterfly in North America — which leaves its late summer breeding grounds in north-eastern U.S. and Canada and travels over 4500 kilometres to reach overwintering grounds on the west coast of California or mountainous sites in Central Mexico. The butterflies return north the following spring to mate and lay their eggs.

Butterflies at riskThe sheer lack of information on Australian butterflies and their movements is one of science’s greatest challenges. In the Atlas of Living Australia - a digital, open access database of Australian plants and animals - there are currently less than 250,000 sighting records for butterflies, compared to 40 million for birds. Yet, there are about 440 butterfly species in Australia. Eight are currently listed as threatened but as many as 38 are potentially under threat of extinction.

Carol and Trevor, as expert citizen scientists, are part of a conservation team studying two of Australia’s most endangered species, the Australian Fritillary Butterfly and the Southern Pink Underwing Moth. The moth is found from Bellingen Shire north to southern Queensland. The Fritillary butterfly is also local, found in open swampy coastal areas where the larval food plant Arrowhead Violet (Viola betonicifolia) occurs. It is known from a few widespread localities between Port Macquarie and Gympie, but populations have declined dramatically and unfortunately, there have been no confirmed sightings since 2001.

“It has never been a common butterfly. Both have also been seriously affected by habitat alteration since white settlement. We have almost got to the end of that because I think the Fritillary is probably extinct,” Trevor says. “It is just so fruitless. You’ve got to wait for somebody, like you, walking out there, who sees it.”

Learning how to seeUnfortunately, we now know the problem with that strategy. I have quickly learnt that “seeing” is one thing but “observing” is quite another. In his seminal work Arctic Dreams, the American nature writer Barry Lopez writes: “It not only takes a long time of watching the animal before you can say what it is doing; it takes a long time to learn how to watch.”

I say to Carol and Trevor, that I would love to go back to our gully at the same time next year, hoping we might see it all again and do a better job of witnessing. But, again, migrations of Australian butterfly species are not so well known or predictable.

“There is nothing to say it wouldn’t happen but migrations appear random,” Trevor explains. “Maybe at times there is one in successive years but you may be waiting 8, 10, 15 years.”

Despite us showing ourselves to be flawed observers, Carol and Trevor are generous with their time and knowledge. They celebrate our butterfly experience with us with Carol giving a genuine, simple summary of the importance of it all, saying finally: “But, what a lovely thing to witness.”

*From our description, and historic records of migrations, the pair think the most likely species we saw was either the Meadow Argus or the Painted Lady. Using their field guide, our memory of colour and shape we felt the butterflies most resembled the Meadow Argus.