Ragihalli/Shivanahalli..the Butterflies and Insects, 271110

November 28, 2010

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!) pioneer 271110 the LEMON PANSY: lemon pansy 271110 here are two different LYCENIDS: lycenid blue 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. lycenid dark blue 271110 the COMMON HEDGE BLUE: common hedge blue 271110 ras two pretty GRASS YELLOWS: grass yellows 271110 ras the COMMON SAILOR: common sailer 271110 ras the COMMON PIERROT: common pierrot 271110 ras the COMMON CERULEAN: (notice how not one butterfly I got can be called "rare"!) cerulean 271110 ras Prajakta spotted this beautiful, un-id MOTH: un id moth 271110 later, I saw this GEOMETRID MOTH: geometrid moth 271110 ras Even FLIES can be so beautiful. These are flies on you-know-what...but look at that iridiscence! flies on... here's another iridiscent fly, NOT siting on s*&t: fly 271110 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. orb weaver... Leucauge sp. Comb-footed spider and here's an ANT bringing food to the nest: ants ras 271110 Here's the activity in the ants' nest: and a lovely blue DRAGONFLY (Uma says it's a female GROUND SKIMMER) dragonfly 271110

…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!

commander on foot

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

foot commander

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

COMMANDER

at my feet!

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