I just got back from the first lab for my Biological Diversity course at #LincolnUniversityNZ. Today's lab was about the local butterfly species, plus we began to teach students the local birds. Near the end of lab we went out for a walk across campus to practise and see what we could find.

I took the students to see the butterfly host plants on campus, including the one small patch of planted Muehlenbeckia complexa on campus.

I stood next to the plant talking about how it was a host plant for the Canterbury winter copper butterfly, but how those have very rarely been seen on campus (sighted in just two years of the past two decades). One of the students, Mieke, interrupted me to point and said, "there's one there". And, yes, there was!

So here it is, the 16th observation of the Canterbury winter copper butterfly from Lincoln University campus.

😀

https://inaturalist.nz/observations/339253684

#butterflies #nz #Lepidoptera #Lycaena #entomology