Butterflies of Mayotte

[sonomoha]

Hey all,
From September, I will be settling back in Mayotte, lovely French island in the Indian Ocean.
I hope there will be some opportunities there to see and photograph some more species. To be honest, that is really all I would like to do there, besides working and working out In the meantime, some acquaintances are blowing my mind with species that make me crave to the point of probably making me leave Britain as early as next month. These zebra blues are just the thing

(photo © Isma Kidza)

I made the post to put my tiny home-country on the map of this beautiful forum and to thank you all for the help and passion instilled.
Be warned, the place is about 15 hours by plane from London through Nairobi. You are more than welcome to visit. There are butterflies about all year long. We don't have proper British scones there but we can sort something out for tea I guess
In the long run, it would fulfilling to sweat for conservation projects on the island. All I saw in Europe was a good inspiration for this. More generally, it will be fun to give some free time into the creation of a stable platform for locals to share information or take initiative in natural world awareness/advocacy/conservation.

[Mark Tutton]

Hi Sonomoha,
Embarrassingly I had to look up where Mayotte was! However it turns out that I do know a bit about these islands as I also have an interest in Phelsuma - Day Geckos, one or two species of which are found on the Comoros. Looking at the map it seems large areas are set aside as “nature reserves” and I will be very interested to see your posts.
Kind Regards
Mark

[sonomoha]

Hi Sonomoha,
Embarrassingly I had to look up where Mayotte was! However it turns out that I do know a bit about these islands as I also have an interest in Phelsuma - Day Geckos, one or two species of which are found on the Comoros. Looking at the map it seems large areas are set aside as “nature reserves” and I will be very interested to see your posts.
Kind Regards
Mark

Hej Mark !
The day gecko are a thing in Mayotte. In some rural areas, you may find them in houses feasting on insects. They are the most loved reptiles there also for their beautiful markings. Hope to see some of those too even if they are less common now cheers!

[Padfield]

How exciting - and daunting as well, I imagine! Just moving from Switzerland back to the UK was big for me ...

I really look forward to your posts. Make the most of the British summer before you go, though!

Best wishes,

Guy

[sonomoha]

How exciting - and daunting as well, I imagine! Just moving from Switzerland back to the UK was big for me ...

I really look forward to your posts. Make the most of the British summer before you go, though!

Best wishes,

Guy

Thank you Guy
CH to UK is quite the move. How is it for butterfly watching ? Do you go back and forth ?
Last year, when we visited our place for holidays, we saw so many on wings, even mantids and odonata. That and birds as well. So I am really looking forward to share some stuff with the online community. Cheers

[David M]

I wish you all the best, sonomoha, and given the far reaching scope of the world wide web, hope that you might find a little time to show us some of the delights Mayotte has to offer, both from a butterfly and a general perspective.

[sonomoha]

I wish you all the best, sonomoha, and given the far reaching scope of the world wide web, hope that you might find a little time to show us some of the delights Mayotte has to offer, both from a butterfly and a general perspective.

Sure! thanks for the encouraging words. I will do my best (with slow local network) to update my journal here once I am getting to see some stuff around the island. Cheers (-:

[NickMorgan]

I am looking forward to reading about what you see there Sonomoha. I love to see what butterflies occur abroad, particularly during the winter months when there is little doing here.
I have had a couple of lovely holidays in Mauritius and loved the butterflies I saw there. I guess that Mayotte will have even more variety, being a little closer to Madagascar and main land Africa.

[sonomoha]

Hello all,
Hope you have had a merry christmas and some nice gifts, or at least some time to rest a bit.
It has been very busy since my move in Mayotte and very little time for capturing butterfly images. My miserable excuse is it is quite hot and insects are always on the move (centipedes too!). Just these last two days I had to risk it all and go out in the rain with a camera to snap something (videos coming up in my feed soon .
If anyone here could please help ID this one, it would be some fantastic help.

My research on web came close to catochrysops strabo or somewhere there about the catochrysops genus. Well, it's quite sure it's a blue but there are so many of them around here of many sizes that I am feeling the ID stress all the time
Cheers.

[Padfield]

Hi Sonomoha,

Your blue is Chilades trochylus. For a tiny butterfly, it has an amazing distribution - I have no idea how it gets around so much! I photographed this one in South India:



I very much look forward to seeing more of your butterflies.

Guy

[sonomoha]

Hi Sonomoha,

Your blue is Chilades trochylus. For a tiny butterfly, it has an amazing distribution - I have no idea how it gets around so much! I photographed this one in South India:



I very much look forward to seeing more of your butterflies.

Guy

Thank you Guy.
As is, we have a lot of those right now down the grass and many tinier ones. I wish I could capture them with such an amazing detail as yours.
Cheers

[David M]

Good to see you back, sonomoha, though it's a shame to hear about your inclement weather, even though I'd readily swap for what we're having right now!

[sonomoha]

January 26th 2020
Hej all !
There are last three encounters on the road here in Mayotte.
First two look like the usual blues and the other is a skipper that might be a Boro sp.. I was going for B gemella but it looks like they do look alike in that genus for a noob like myself
I could really use some help with ID here, if you don't mind

Leptotes pirithous

Chilades trochylus ?

Borbo sp.

Anyway, this is it for January. There have been a couple of other sightings, notably the brilliant acraea ranavalona, but they are on phone and I have to figure how to get to use the forum from my phone

Have a beautiful week all !

[Padfield]

Hi Sonomoha.

I agree with your blues. There is another species of Leptotes found on Mayotte, L. mayottensis, almost indistinguishable from pirithous. The female (which yours seems to be) is separable by the underside hindwing, which has a rather well defined white submarginal band. From the pictures in my book, I think yours is pirithous.

Your skipper is (I think) Pelopidas mathias. The features distinguishing this from the two Borbo species found on Mayotte (gemella and fatuellus) are two spots (instead of one or none) at the end of the forewing cell - not visible in your picture - and the arc of white discal points on the underside hindwing. These are visible in your picture. The Borbo species have no white points here.

If you haven't already got it, the book you need is Les Papillons diurnes des Îles Comores / the Butterflies of the Comoros, published as a bilingual volume by Pensoft.

I look forward to more!

Guy

EDIT: I've changed my mind! The book I mentioned says on p. 69 that the Borbo species 'always lack any trace of a discal series of spots' on the hindwing. But then it says that Borbo fatuellus often in the male and always in the female has white spots in ss. 2, 3 and 6 of the underside hindwing! Those spots are present in your butterfly and there is no sub-basal spot, so I now go for Borbo fatuellus.

[sonomoha]

Thank you very much Guy for your feedback, much appreciated.
I was not quite aware of an endemic Leptotes, now I will be looking around for it
There is another online source by the team that published that book you quoted, so I started from there.
They are quite the confusing genus, all beautifully confusing
Here, list of hesperidae is down to page 137

db96cc9371995e35340db4c8f761d3b41f73.pdf

(591.07 KiB) Downloaded 67 times

Next, I hope to get my own copy of that book very soon (rather take it in UK since it is double the price in France).

Cheers !