As part of my plan of self-improvement to fill in the days I was stuck in lock-down, I decided to develop a new interest – butterfly spotting.

I make no bones about it. When I fixate on something, I don’t like to let go. As a political cartoonist, Robert Mugabe, Jacob Zuma and Donald Trump have all, in turn, become objects for both my anger and relentless scorn.

The flip side to this is my obsessive quest to find beauty and it is here the butterflies come in.

I like to hunt things not because I have any desire to capture or kill them but because of the sense of discovery it brings. Through acquaintance and experience comes knowledge.

I don’t know enough about butterflies to know if my local patch is a particularly good spot for them or not but they are here and this is where we both play out the daily drama of our lives. Like astronauts in a spaceship we are fellow-travellers, co-habitants in this capsule we call Earth. My joy stems from the search, the exercise of a skill and the intense pleasure that comes finding out who I share my space with..

I always enjoy these field excursions. There is a comforting familiarity about this countryside. I have walked it many times. Over the years I have got to know all the landmarks and a lot of the wildlife.

I know this stretch of grasslands is home to a little group of Wailing Cisticolas and that, on misty mornings, the Black Crows like to call from the top of those three pines. That odd-shaped cluster of rocks is the playground for a family of cheery, chatty, Buff-streaked Chats.

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The Yellow Warblers prefer the boggy patch down by the river. Invariably there will be a wagtail or two there as well where the stream runs fastest over the rocks.

And that cluster of pines over there? That is where the Long-crested Eagle has its nest.

It is not just the birds. Oribi and reedbuck are sometimes to be seen in that valley on the other side of the fence. There is an old Bushbuck ram who sometimes emerges from our small indigenous forest.

I have also stumbled on several puff-adders, lying doggo on this path. Them, I give a wide berth.

I have not been specifically studying them for all that long but already I have discovered that a surprising number of butterflies live here too.

As I walk along the path they come flapping and gliding, undulating and all but loop-the-looping. They can be difficult to get near even when they have settled on the ground. I wonder whether they have some sort of in-built sonar system that alerts them to my presence or whether they just pick up the vibrations of my boots hitting the ground?

There is still a lot to learn. With birds you can refine your focus by what you know about their preferences and behaviour. With butterflies I don’t have that sort of accumulated knowledge and experience. I am coming in half blind. I have to slowly feel my way.

I have no ‘hit list’ of butterflies I expect to see (other than the one who inspired this piece). I will accept whatever comes along.

I am beginning to make some progress. I now recognise an assortment of garden specials like the Garden Inspector (Precis ceryne ceryne), the Garden Acraea (Acraea horta), the Rainforest Brown (Cassionyympha cassius) and the Polka Dot (Pardopsis punctatissima). On Rubble Row there are usually African Monarchs (Danaus chrysippus) and Yellow Pansies (Junonia hierta cebrene).

A bit further down the path – almost half-way to the river – there is a bank where the African Jokers (my spirit butterfly, I have decided) like to hangout. This is where I also recorded my first Bush Bronze (Cacyreus lingeus), a small but beautifully patterned butterfly.

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Betwixt and between are a whole assortment of other butterflies, large, medium and small. And mostly colourful. Many are as stunning as their names suggest…

By constantly checking my butterfly field book* to identify the ones I am unfamiliar with I am slowly beginning to learn more about their characteristics, behaviour and preferred habitat.

I have also discovered the Karkloof, where I live, is home to one of the rarest of them all – the Karkloof Blue (Orachrysops ariadne. Also known as the Karkloof Cupid).

It is so rare that when ESKOM threatened to run a line of massive electricity pylons through our pristine, beautiful, valley, a group of concerned local conservationists and farmers banded together and used its highly threatened status as one of their arguments to oppose the construction.

Indeed the Karkloof Blue is so rare, the Midland Meander Association have adopted it as their symbol and made saving it part of their mission statement.

Flipping a little further through the pages of my book I discovered it is not the only butterfly that takes its name from the area. There is also the Karkloof Charanx (Charaxes karkloof. Also known as the Karkloof Emperor) and the Karkloof Russet (Aloeides susanae. Also known as Susan’s Copper).

Now I am getting in to this butterfly thing, I must look out for them too.

I decided to devote my main focus, however, to tracking down the Karkloof Blue, transferring the same obsessions I normally employ when birding. Its flight period is March-April which cuts down my window of opportunity considerably.

Before setting out to look for it, though, I needed to know more about my quarry.

The Field Guide describes it as “Colonial in steep-sided grass gullies near Afromontane forest.” That sounded a bit like our part of the world. Especially the ‘colonial’ bit…

Wanting to find out more I turned, next, to the University of Google:

Endemic to the mist-belt grassland of KwaZulu-Natal, the Karkloof Blue is on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species.

Extensive burning, alien encroachment and livestock have all led to its decline as its habitat has been systematically destroyed. With only only three known colonies, one of which is in the Karkloof, it is now regarded as an indicator species.

The statistics make grim reading: due to afforestation and cultivation at least 92% of the Mist-belt grassland has been transformed, with only 1% in good condition remaining.

It seems pretty obvious to me that the Karkloof Blue is not the only creatures whose habitat is being destroyed in these ways. I am sure countless other insects, reptiles and rodents are experiencing a similar fate and this, in turn, must be having a ripple effect on the birds and animals that prey on them.

It is worrying. I suppose it all comes down to that spaceship analogy I used earlier on. We need to realise we only have limited resources and the more we destroy or pollute them, the more we threaten our own future survival.

As sad and distressing as I find this, I intend to persist in my efforts to track down the Karkloof Blue. So far, I have come across a few blue butterflies that come close but don’t quite fit the bill. There is the African Grass (or Sooty) Blue (Zizzeeria knysna), the Common Zebra Blue (Leptotes pirithous pirithous) and the Pea Blue (Lampides boeticus).

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But no Karkloof Blue.

With winter fast approaching and its flight period closing down, I decided to postpone my search until next season. Then, I intend to look harder, thinking about the best likely habitat and hoping for that lucky break and familiar surge of excitement that comes from finding something new.

I can feel it. I can sense it. I know it is out there somewhere in the rolling green ocean of grass, just waiting to be found.

It is the lure of the rare. The Karkloof Blue has become my Moby Dick. My White (Blue?) Whale.

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*Field Guide to the Butterflies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (published by Struik Nature).