Jan Pasternak's remarkable Paradisea aberration.

[nomad]

Some time ago, Jacques Porteneuve kindly sent me an image of Jan Pasternak's remarkable Ornithoptera paradisea flavescens aberration that he had captured at Lake Yamur in Western New Guinea during 1978. Jan had previously sent the image to Jacques. I believe this specimen was sold to a Japanese collector.




Recently Marcin Gajewski has shown his remarkable picture of Jan Pasternak holding the same aberration. Many thanks to Marcin for allowing the photograph to be reproduced here. I enjoyed seeing this very much. As mentioned before, this aberration is very similar to the O. paradisea borchi specimen, which was caught by Harry Borch in the Torricelli mountains in Papua and was sold at a Drouot Paris sale for 17000 euros.

[nomad]

Jacques image of Jan Pasternak's unique aberration of O. paradisea flavescens was originally taken by Ray Straatman from the collection of W. Schneder. So it transpires that this magnificent aberration did not end up in Japan but perhaps in Germany or Australia??. So does anybody know of a Mr W. Schneder and if he is still with us and does any collector know the whereabouts of the Pasternak aberration today. Where is the W. Schneder collection at present. One would imagine if he bought this rare aberration he would have had a large Ornithoptera collection, especially if he knew Jan Pasternak and Ray Straatman.

On another note that huge price that the male golden euphorion may command is very high considering their are a number-few males of the same aberration in private collections. So what would the price be for the only O. paradisea flavescens unique wild caught aberration.

Again many thanks to Marcin for the further photographs.

[nomad]

Unless that is a small male of arfakensis Jan is holding - they are usually quite large, it seems his aberration was a very good- extra large size for a flavescens male.