Today's photo was taken on a clothesline at Black Hill, where the butterfly had just laid about 50 tiny eggs on a bright green tee-shirt.

The imperial jezebel is not a common butterfly in the Ballarat district, but there have been more reports than usual this autumn.

Most sightings have been around clumps of mistletoes in forests or on roadsides. Mistletoe leaves of several species are the food of the caterpillars, and this is where the eggs are usually deposited.

The success of the eggs in the photo would most likely be nil. Butterflies usually lay their eggs on plants suitable for the newly-hatched caterpillars to feed, so a tee-shirt of artificial fibre is certainly not suitable.

The eggs are carefully-spaced, attached individually, not touching each other. There were about 40 in the group on the tee-shirt.

Transferring them to a more suitable spot would be very difficult. It would require access to a mistletoe plant, and a means of attaching each of the 50 eggs to the upper side of a leaf.

The imperial jezebel butterfly was long-known as the imperial white. The current name is better, because the white in the upper wings is not prominent in the wild, especially in the greyer female. There are several similar species of jezebels, forming a sub-group of the white family of butterflies.

The imperial jezebel can be found locally from early spring through until mid-autumn.

Also found locally is the spotted jezebel, with smaller and rounder red and yellow spots under its wings. It is seen more often around Ballarat than the imperial jezebel, perhaps because its caterpillars feed on both mistletoe and cherry ballart, rather than on mistletoe alone. The jezebels are similar in size to the common brown butterfly; they are larger than the cabbage white. Their wingspan is 65 - 70 millimetres.

Stubble burning often attracts hawks of various kinds, coming in from afar to catch birds and animals flushed by the flames.

A recent report from Ullina notes six black kites, one black falcon, and an unidentified falcon around a burn. Whistling kites are sometimes attracted to stubble burns, but not in this case.

Medium-sized hawks were seen very high above an earlier fire at Ullina, but no hawks could be found at a Learmonth burn.

The birds' sudden appearance at burn-offs is remarkable. They seem to know that there is potential easy food, and they travel rapidly for several kilometres to find it.

What sort is this large dragonfly? Its tail was black and yellow. It was a long way from water.

S.E., Newington.

This is the tau emerald, one of the more common local larger dragonflies. It is a strong flier and a wanderer, frequently found long distances from water.

The "tiger" patterning on its abdomen helps identification, although there are several other local species that are rather similar. Positive identification in flight is very difficult.

The unusual name comes from the T-shaped letter of the Greek alphabet. The dragonfly has a distinctive black T-shaped mark on its forehead.

It breeds mostly in still waters such as lakes, pools and ponds, and tolerates a wide temperature range in both its adult and nymph ("mudeye") stages. The mudeyes are known to fishermen as "bug mudeyes", and the common mudeyes in Lake Wendouree may in fact belong to this dragonfly.