With ,Nisarg ( a young man whose name, most aptly, means "nature"!) and three other friends from the JLRNTP group...Neelu, Sachin and Adarsh.... I went off to the Manchinabele area early on Sunday morning....and here's a couple of images of the Crimson Rose, that most common of butterflies:

and

The place was a haven for butterflies, and here’s one which Madhu of the JLRNTP tells me is the White-Red Tip (nice logical name, isn’t it?)…a similar one is called the Red Postman in the US

And another view of it, which no self-respecting photographer would put up, with that twig or whatever across the butterfly, but then, I don’t mind!

Another unknown (my serious naturalist friends must be squirming by now, but I am waiting for Karthik’s return from the Butterfly meet in the Western Ghats! It is now id’d as the Blue Tiger:

This one, my fellow NTP-ian Aditya Kamath says, is a Common Gull:

And what I think is the Common Mormon, correct me please if I am wrong…Yes, I am wrong, it is the Common Tiger ( I want to see enough tigers at Bandipur to be able to say, “I saw many common tigers”!!)

As usual, had the wrong lens for all the macro photography opportunities that suddenly happened…I had taken my camera with the prime lens down a steep slope, away from the other lenses, when these beauties decided to tempt me! When I have the prime lens, the macro shots happen, and as soon as I fit the macro lens, the birds all show up…

Oh, well, here’s a dragonfly-with-the-wrong-lens. I am still not sure of its name so with all the tigers up above, I am calling it the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon..!

All that stuff underneath is debris in the shallows,not crap from my camera!

Next post will be the story of the Hoopoe in the Village, the White-Browed Bulbul, and other feathered denizens ….