male, Mimene atropatene, Hesperiidae

This large skipper is the rarest of the rare, known only from the Iron Range area and rarely seen even there. There might be a dozen or so records, ever.
Mimene atropatene also occurs in New Guinea and some nearby islands, but there it is not purple – it has a blue-green sheen instead. The matter has been flagged as needing taxonomic attention.

The purple sheen is evident only in good light, in this case my flash. We didn’t see the sheen in the field.

In my 16 days at Iron Range, I saw just this one individual. And even this involved a deal of luck. It was late in the day, butterflies were settling down for the night, and we were heading back to base. I had noted before heading back that the battery in my camera was almost flat, but decided to leave changing it until back at base. We stopped briefly along the way, and the Purple Swift flew in and landed close by in a dense, dark rainforest gully. It sat and sat ... while I frantically changed the battery in my camera ... (is there a lesson here?)