FOUND HIGH OR LOW

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 62, 15 March 1933, Page 10

FOUND HIGH OR LOW

THE WHITE BUTTERFLY

AT HOME ON PIHANGA

■ Three or four years ago the Febru-ary-March tripper in the backblocks of the North Island was impressed with the new spread of ragwort, signalised by its yellow flower-clusters. This year he is still shocked by the yellow weed, but side by side with it is the white butterfly. Prom the East Coast the butterfly has crossed backbone ranges and this summer infests the country far and wide.

Back in the centre of the Kaiangaroa Plains (in. almost the heart of the North Island!) the white-pest flutters. Only in recent years has tree-planting leached out to "Wairapukao, formerly a ■wide waste of tussock, but the butterfly has got there in one season, and thirty were counted in a few yards of garden there. On Saturday visitors to the summit of Pihanga, the mountain behind Tokaanu, 4352 feet high, saw the white butterfly and the yellow ragwort right on the summit. Both appeared to be entirely at home. On the Tongariro Eiver the butterfly hovers over the famous fishing pools, and sometimes rises to the tops of the seech trees fringing the steep bank, again fluttering down to the water; and twice on Friday it was seen to alight on the water of the heavy rapids rushing in and out of the pools, where it rode lightly on the dancing ripples, then took the air again as if used, to water-rides. Water-flies do this to deposit eggs.

Trout were not seen to snap at the butterfly, nor were fantails, though the latter had continuous opportunity. But on Sunday at Ngaio a fantail was seen by three Wellington observers to chase, capture,., and apparently consume a white butterfly. Was this a chance occurrence, or is there a-prospect that birds may become checks on. the pestt Judged by size, two white butterflies should be more than a meal for a fantail. The kingfisher or the starling or the maligned, magpie looks more like the bird for tie job.'