I emailed the latest members to have taken the Naturalists’ Training Program, about going on a birding trip. Alas, of the 17, only 3 were able to come; but we had such a wonderful time, we left at about 6.45am…and got home only past 3pm! I’ll post about the 58 or so species we saw…but right now, I’ll show you some of the flutter bys….

This post owes a lot of help to Uma, the spider id from Karthik, and is dedicated to Rohit, who was, in his own words, “stuck slaving away at work” and couldn’t make it for the outing….

The COMMON GULL (Uma says this is a Pioneer, but I feel it's a Common Gull, and Ulhas seems to agree...but she's right in saying it's rather a ragged specimen...it must be a survivor!) the LEMON PANSY: here are two different LYCENIDS: It's quite difficult to get these tiny butterflies resting with their wings open, unless it's early in the morning...but today, all of them were doing this at 1.30pm, because the overcast skies were just clearing up. the COMMON HEDGE BLUE: two pretty GRASS YELLOWS: the COMMON SAILOR: the COMMON PIERROT: the COMMON CERULEAN: (notice how not one butterfly I got can be called "rare"!) Prajakta spotted this beautiful, un-id MOTH: later, I saw this GEOMETRID MOTH: Even FLIES can be so beautiful. These are flies on you-know-what...but look at that iridiscence! here's another iridiscent fly, NOT siting on s*&t: Here's a lovely spider that was weaving its web as I watched, Karthik tells me it's an orb-weaver, of the Leucauge species. and here's an ANT bringing food to the nest: Here's the activity in the ants' nest: and a lovely blue DRAGONFLY (Uma says it's a female GROUND SKIMMER)

…but the highlight was when I had climbed the water tower in the Shivanahalli Ramakrishna Ashram, to photograph the Kadamba tree….

I often talk of Life Under Foot…this time, I got Life On Foot!

A buttefly, my left foot! I exclaimed, in wonder.

And how powerful I must be, said Uma, to have a

COMMANDER

at my feet!