Yellow Admiral

Yellow Admiral - Vanessa itea

While we were up at Barrington Tops I managed to photograph a number of species of butterfly. The Yellow Admiral, also known as the Australia Admiral, was probably one of the more colourful butterflies I saw on this particular trip (I'll upload the other species over the next few weeks).  They are native to Australia, New Zealand and the Norfolk Islands.

More photographs inside.

de

Yellow Admiral - Vanessa itea

Yellow Admirals are quite common throughout their range as long as their food plants are available. Unfortunately for me, their food plants include stinging nettles which were in abundance near where we stayed. These butterflies are strong fliers and, according to some web sites, have survived wind blown travel from Australia to New Zealand across the Tasman sea.

Yellow Admiral - Vanessa itea

The best time to photograph butterflies is probably early morning as butterflies take a while to "warm up" and get active. I was surprised at how close I was able to get to them to take these photographs. I was actually limited by the minimum focusing distance on the 100-400mm lens which I had on at the time.

Yellow Admiral - Vanessa itea

These photographs were captured with a Canon 7D and the Canon 100-400mm lens.