Missed that specimen.

[nomad]

Hi fellow collectors
I expect many of you, for whatever reason have missed adding a most desirable specimen to their collection. My story was way back in the 1980s when Paul Smart of the Saruman Museum had two Ornithoptera alexandraes males for sale. Both were collected in New Guinea by one of my heros A. S. Meek, I hesitated and they were gone.
I stopped collecting for a long period but started again about five years ago. I have regretted that I did not buy one of those alexandrae ever since. What are your stories about your missed opportunity to buy a butterfly that you have always wanted for your collection.

Peter.

[johnnyboy]

Peter,

I went to the Saruman Museum in the 1970's, I was only in my teens and enquired about O. golath. I didn't like Paul Smart, he was smarmy and patronising and more or less told me that it was way out of my league(he was asking around £500 for a pair, a big amount then of course) . His wife seemed nice though.

I did get goliath in the eighties, at a much better price of course.
Getting back to your original topic,I had the opportunity to own homerus, but it passed me by, regret it now.


Johnny

[wollastoni]

What I remember better are the specimens I missed in the field...

- I will remember all my life a Precis rhadama missed on La Réunion island when I was a kid. This splendid blue butterfly appeared to the European kid I was like the Graal.
- I still remember this strange Delias I missed in Wamerek village in West Papua in 2009... it was on a flower, I thought I caught it... but there was nothing into my net. I will never know what it was.... it looked like the rare female of toxopei.
- Still in 2009 in Papua, I missed an undescribed Lycaenidae in Air Garam spot (near Wamena). Some of my friends caught it. It has been described in 2010 as Epimastidia yiwikana.
- in 2010 in Sulawesi, I tried to catch a splendid Pachliopta and made a big fall of about 3 meters high... no injuries luckily...

[Deleted]

I missed out on Homerus a couple of years back, massive mistake. I also regret missing out on a male stichopthalma godfreyi, I had a female, I had to wait another 15 years to get a male and finally have a pair, I do dither at insect fairs and lost out on many others.

[nostrodamus]

I missed a perfect H. ellena from Algeria (insectfair Frankfurt, 70 euro) 3 years ago, I hesitated , when I wanted to buy it , it was gone...
In nature : Anti Atlas: I missed 2 P. saharae that were hilltopping...
This year in Samos: some P. thrax, they are real jets !!!!

[nomad]

Hi Johnny

I also went to the Saruman museum back in the 1980s and did not enjoy the experience. Peter Smart did rather overdo the i am a famous entomologist bit. I went there to buy one of the alexandrae males but he had sold them. He had little time for a young collector.

Hi Olivier

Sorry you missed those Delias and other specimens. I know the anguish of the field collector missing a rare specimen. I had a late friend who many years ago, missed a pure black Papilio machaon as it was nectaring on a flower, it then flew off over deep water.


Hi dunc and nostrodamus, my commiserations for missing those specimens. Homerus like alexandrae is a very lovely butterfly and now impossible to obtain, both of them being on Cites one, making missing them all the more harder to bear.

Peter.

[johnnyboy]

Peter,

Out of interest, do you have O. alexandrae in your collection?

Johnny

[nomad]

Johnny

I have never managed to get O. alexandrae for my collection. The one I have chosen for my avatar is from a 1907 A.S. Meek museum specimen.

Peter.

[temenes11]

I missed a perfect pair of cuban Papilio Oxynius two years ago .
They are not really prohibited but are seldom seen on the market

[boogtwo]

I don't buy or sell Lepidoptera, never have in the almost 50 years I've done them seriuosly. Instead I traveled to where they live to study and discover their life histories, hopefully get/make a gravid female or a few of their livestock and rear them for a pair or two for my synoptic collection, or a pair or two wing caught otherwise. I saw no need for more than one or two pair of any of them in my collection, so all the excess reared or caught were returned to the colony.

So my "missed" are many... from never finding some rare species/subspeices I was looking for even after years looking to chasing one until I dropped without ever getting a net on it in my younger days.

To qualify that... many I went looking for was to confirm they even existed at a specific location, some if they existed at all and were not in fact extinct. One of those I remember the best was Tinostoma smaragditis from Kaua'i, HI. I made several trips there in the 80's to the exact spots, mostly in the Koke'e region, where the very few had been seen at since the first one about 1895. Last seen had been in the 70's, all seen up to then in small windows with up to decades between each from the first one discovered. So they were thought to be exticnt when up to several decades passed between sightings. As the larval food plant(s) was still unknown and even the exact habitat not certain, it made for a hard task. None ever came to my lights, none were seen in the daytime on any of my trips, and I spent all night and almost all day everyday trying for up to a week or two each trip. Years later a few more found by others in the 90's brought the total up to 26 total that had ever been collected since 1895. As far as I know the host plant is still unknown, and a couple of rearing attempts with a smorgesboard of native plants and artificial diets failed. Around 2 dozen in just over a 100 years late 90's can be called pretty rare. But at 117 years since the first now there is at least hope they may still not be extinct.

[bobw]

Like Johnny and Peter I spent a lot of time (and money) at Saruman in the 70s & 80s. As they said, Paul and Gita Smart were not the most pleasant of people, but I always saw Chris Samson, who was a pleasure to deal with; in fact we still keep in touch to this day.

Bob

[nomad]

Yes Boogtoo

That is what you call a very rare moth. Sorry to hear your searches were unsuccessful. I have looked this species up and it is a very fine Sphinx [Hawk] moth from the Sphingidae family. Lovely colour with its green wings and thorax that has a black collar with orange antenna. I am glad it is not extinct and it was found again in 1997.

Peter.

[Adam Cotton]

Agree with Bobw, Chris Samson was always a good person to deal with at Saruman. When they sold the collections before closing I managed to buy a couple of the specimens of Papilionidae pictured in Paul Smart's book.

Adam.

[Deleted]

A friend of mine supplied the female antimachus in his book.

[boogtwo]

Thanks Peter.

My goal was to discover anything not known about Tinostoma smaragditis, rear if possible, at least tag wild adults if possible, both in hopes of releasing and relocating them again for an idea of what their daily life and range was. At most I would have taken one specimen for the Bishop Museum that I was tied to a friend on staff there some of those years, none for my own unless I did rear so many of them I could have kept a pair. Most of my time in Hawaii was spent rearing Danaus plexippus to eatablish current percentages of form nivosus in different colonies on all the islands, and how they interacted with two Bulbul species that prey on Danaus there. But I also reared a lot of Vanessa tameamea, Vega (Udara) blackburnii and Tmolus echion to reseed old traditional locations with where they had mostly disappeared due to encroachment or habitat loss. The two endemics (V. tameamea & V. blackburnii) were in a huge decline in Hawaii, probably still are and T. echion was quite rare except in a few certain locations. I think I have 2 pairs of nivosus, 1 pair of blackburnii, 1 male only of echion and none of tameamea in my synoptic collection despite rearing hundreds of each of them. They were all in a steep decline (except nivosus znd lessor one), so I released all the rest of them I reared back in the same colonies I sleeved each of the gravid females at to get eggs.

BTW, not included in the count of Tinostoma smaragditis is some known to have been seen by locals, and there may be others seen by them not reported to protect them. Traditional Hawaiians enjoy all of nature as it is, wild and free, and this species does have special meaning to them. Most don't mind a Haole doing the lepidoptera there though, even catching a few to take. Some will actually help you, take you to them if you know enough of their language or hawaiian names for those that have them so they understand what you are seeking. Some of my best spots were ones I was lead to by natives far away from the neatenn paths. Not a lot of lepidoptera species in Hawaii, only two that are endemic, the rest all introduced. One in particular that was intentionally introduced, Strymon bazochii, was to control an also introduced plant it's larva feed on. Big mistake that soon became a serious problem... they missed the point that the butterfly is also the plants chief pollenator. Now the plants grow rampant and huge in that tropical evrironment in large stands that choke out most other native plant species, and that also effects other species that count on those. The adults can be seen in numbers anywhere year round, even downtown in cities. About the same with Lampides boeticus skimming along just about anywhere inches above the ground.