deponti

We were pretty lucky with our sightings and observations on the Manchinabele trip on the 21st of November; apart from the

TAWNY EAGLE



I also got, thanks to Manju, a first-time-ever sighting, and observation, of the

WHITE-NAPED WOODPECKER

high up in a

TAMARIND tree




( more here.... )


I compare my learning to this shoot, reaching beyond what's old to something new and fresh:




Here's a 360-degree view of the Manchinabele backwaters, with the beautiful

LITTLE EGRETS floating in to land...





A beautiful place, and an enjoyable outing...I took the train to Chennai feeling very happy indeed.

On both my visit to Bannerghatta, and to Turahalli, Galibore, and Ramnagara, I noticed a wide variety of butterflies flitting along in their various colours. Of course, the time of day (mid-morning) was not ideal to photograph them, as that is their nectar-gathering time and so they were most restless, and would hardly settle for more than a second or two anywhere.

So of course it was the butterflies' fault that I got mediocre pictures....having allocated the blame correctly, here they are:


The

BLUE PANSY





( a list of fritillaries )


Let me end with this beautiful


BLUE-WINGED WASP





This post is dedicated to


Karthik

who is an authority on butterflies!

Update:

My NTP friends, Vikram Hiresavi, M V Shreeram, adarshraju ,Vineet, and Uma
have all, as usual, taken the trouble to help me out with the ids. :) Thank you!

Of course, as usual, I haven't been able to find a match, so there's no id, but I am sure some kind reader will tell me what it is....

( She alights on the flower..it's a she...such a beautiful, light-as-air creature HAS to be a she... )

And a butterfly is always a beautiful sight to see!




This post is dedicated to Karthik who always tells us about the delights that await us in our own gardens!

It's lovely to have a large park so close to home...so it's also easy to pack a picnic lunch and go off on a Sunday, and look for a suitable spot:




Then settle down and start on the food:




( sights from the picnic )

The sun went down, and we went home, happy and content:




Forest Park...a great place to have within 10 minutes' walk from home!

As I walk in Forest Park, so many images fall on my mind's eye, and only a few of them are on camera. This post is mostly for myself, to look at later and recreate those magical evenings when the light melted into the purple dusk, the air held a hush, and I felt totally at peace....


I see very few butterflies, but I managed to get this tiny BLUE...



( some random images )

And this one is my favourite for the memory it brings back....the thundercloud was looming up, all the sky was a luminous mauve and purple, and the evening just glowed... the boat-lights shone dimly upon the waters of the creek, and the cool breeze was building up into a wind...dusk was a beautiful time to be there!

A macro lens makes you look at the insect world...with fresh eyes. I may never take the kind of wonderful pictures that

Karthik

takes with that macro lens and that keen eye...but here are my attempts!

I've already posted about the

bug season

...but I thought I'd capture the everyday bugs, too!

Let's start with this very tiny

FLY
(update: siniak_castle says it's a DRAIN FLY)


that A found on the washbasin of the women's room in the World Bird Sanctuary! It's actually the size of a pinhead...but just look at those feathery feelers, and those gauzy wings!




( a few more of 'em critters )

There it was, glowing on the side of the road in

Lone Elk Park :




Off to LA to attend a dance performance over the weekend..more about that anon...meanwhile...you lot enjoy YOUR weekend!

The BULBs (Bangalore Urban Lady Birders) said they would like an outing to Valley School this morning...I am a member in good standing....so off I went, too!

We found some nice insects to photograph this time; Jai spotted a COTTON STAINER BUG flying along, and when it landed, we snapped it from the front





And from the side!

( a few more images )


As we were turning out on to the main road from the road leading to the Valley School, Jai pointed...and there was this scene of summer and flowers...



What a pity that the Bangalore government is intent on cutting down trees...just look what the trees can give us!


Enjoy the summer in Bangalore, local folks, while I go to the 12 deg Celsius St Louis spring!

Have been trying out the macro function on the 300mm lens lately....

Here's one shot, taken today morning at Valley School, where I went with the most enthusiastic group of people who just took the JLRNTP in March....

Whoops, forgot the id's. This is the TAWNY COSTER:




Another, taken at the Bannerghatta zoo area yesterday, with Garima,Gayathri,Jainy,Suma and Uma: it's the GRAM BLUE:




The third, also yesterday, it's the CRIMSON ROSE:





Butterflies make good subjects for macro experimentation!

Last Saturday was a great day; Veena wanted several of her friends to come along for a birding trip, so we all went to Bannerghatta ...itsalouwelylife was also here for the weekend, and the LJ part of the crowd was anushsh, mohanvee, IALL, and me....

The NTP group consisted of Anush, Mohanvee, Jyothi (who is taking the NTP next weekend) and me....

What better way to start a morning than the song of a lark? Here's the INDIAN BUSHLARK, which was singing sweetly on the wire outside the JLR Restaurant:



( You can click here several pictures of plants, a reptile, a butterfly, and birds.... )

I finally took a couple of shots of the flash-of-electric-blue-as-it-flies WHITE-BREASTED KINGFISHER, sitting and calling atop a bamboo shoot:





And lastly, here is the group who went that day (except anushsh</a>

Oh, the image is too large so the entire right-hand-side contingent, including the two Mohans, have been cut off...to see the photo, click
here

I am off to Bannerghatta (this time, the Elephant Corridor beyond the large quarry)...so my Ragihalli (last Sunday) post will have to wait a little...sorry...too many domestic chores have resulted in a gol (that's backlog!)....

If you heard something being called "Ourapteryx clara, Geometridae", would you ever associate it with this ?

Such a beauty, with an Orrible name....

I will never be a botanist, zoologist, lepidopterist, or any other ist. I would call that the star moth and enjoy its beauty...

Well, I realize others need to have a unique name to id it by, but that's NOT what I would like to call it!


Here's another image from my INW friend Kiran Srivastava:

One of the best remedies I have for the blahs is...head out to some greenery (or, as it nowadays, the brownery.) So when I got a chance, even at 8am, to visit Turahalli, I jumped at it, and...the birds seem to just arrive to be sighted by Sharad!

In fact, what we did was, two separate visits to Turahalli, in the morning and the evening. In the morning, the visit was cut short as I learnt of a friend's bereavement and had to come back, and in the evening, we locked the keys inside the car and had a real comedy of about an hour, in which Anush took a ride with a passing scooterist to the nearby village, to try and buy a hacksaw blade to try and pry open the car door.... and Sharad and I hunted around for likely sticks that would do the trick! (Yes, you could call us hunter-gatherers at this point.) Sharad did find a stick that finally opened the car door (all you people who think that locking the car door is very safe, beware!) but in these two short intervals, here's what we saw.

I notice that in my field trip reports I always seem to write about the mammals and birds first and then come to the flowers, butterflies and other stuff, as if they were somehow less important....well, this time I am going to reverse the order.

Let's start with this wildflower that shines in a million tiny sunbursts, all over the slopes, rocks and fields...one normally says one caught an image on the fly, but here it's a fly in the image!







( lots of not-at-all-good photographs if you like )

On another distant peepul tree sat this beautiful little SPOTTED OWLET, but it was very alert and just the fact of our getting out of the car was enough to send it flying off on silent wings.





A great time was had by all, and since Sharad is about to become a father at any moment, we are also hoping for a sighting of the stork!

Most of the butterflies we saw are completely unknown to me, so I am just going to post the pics here and ask one of my better-informed friends for the id's and update...


Let's start with this beauty...

Update: Thanks to Rohini for some id's.... this is the CLIPPER:




( more mysterious ones here )

At the very end of the trip, I found this huge WASPS' NEST:

OK, well, this is going to be a nice short post. I know DS (Diddly Squat) about butterflies and am still trying to distinguish between a Crimson Rose and a Common Rose...I am definitely a South Indian Duffer in this field!

So, I just clicked some of them as I saw them; Karthik helped me out with some, and I hope the readers will help me out with the others...


I saw several butterflies, for some reason, with gray/white and black patterns. I wonder why they are so prevalent? This one's the GREY COUNT:




( more of 'em critters here )

I close with this really beautiful (un id) MOTH that I saw in Nameri, too, in the Potsali Camp trekking area:



If anyone can help me with the id's..I would be full of grate!

My NTP friend (well, that's actually one of the interests we share, but that will serve to identify him!) C suddenly called up on Wednesday, saying he and R were going to Valley School.. I didn't even stop to think if they were inviting me along, I just jumped in, and the poor guys had no choice!

It proved, moreover, to be a real treat, with the light at its warmest, and all the birds (except of course the evil few...more about that later) actually posing in a calm and composed way for us....

Here are C and R, clicking away to glory, and the glory was, the grasses lit up by the morning sun:





( photographs here )


And we found one animal that would predate on all the above...this cat (alas, just the domestic variety, but how sleek and well-fed and totally..feline...it was, as it moved along silently!)




A most enjoyable, sudden trip, and one which recompensed me for this weekend, because I was just too tired to wake up this Saturday in time to go anywhere!

It's amazing that just when I feel I am not totally ignorant about birds, I start noticing butterflies, and am back to square zero with ids....

I am posting all the photos I have, good, bad (they can't be ugly because they are butterflies!)....and where I have blanks, could you please help out with the ids and be good friends?


Let me start with the known ones like the PEACOCK PANSY:





( LOTS of 'em here, so look only if and when you have time )


no. 9041 is also a PEACOCK PANSY, according to Aditya...





no.9044, a PIONEER, according to Aditya



no.9051,which is a COMMON LEOPARD:




I think that I shall never be
An authority on a butterflea...
What? It's called a butterfly?
Oh, I'll tell you why
I call it that..because I flee
When yet another new one I see!

When I saw this image on my laptop, I *did* try to brush off the ant. So I am very impressed with myself (not for being so dumb but for taking such a snap)..I hope it displays as well on this monitor of yours....






*

The sheetrock at Ragihalli (which is in the Bannerghatta area) means fantastic views, and surreal designs in the rock...the sun, shining through a wisp of raincloud (all that water in the cloud gives that prismatic effect) was reflected in one of the hundreds of rock pools on the rock slopes...





Reminded me, in some strange way, of this photograph by Seshadri...

http://www.indianaturewatch.net/displayimage.php?id=52835


******************


No birder likes crows, as they ...er...crow-d out all other birds (they are the humans of the bird kingdom!) and mob other birds too...but they are very intelligent, adaptable birds.

We were sitting in Ragihalli village after a long, lovely morning of birding, having hot chai at what I call Ragihalli Restaurant, when I saw this baby crow with its mother...





You can see it's a baby because of the pinkness inside the mouth. The baby is sitting, hoping to be fed more food; but s/he is almost fully-grown, and the mother has the resignd look of mothers everywhere, who wish their baby would start growing up and getting their own food, instead of wanting to be spoon bill-fed!

*****************


The third image had me riveted to the spot for a while. So often we see butterflies whose wings are in tatters; Karthik tells us that such butterflies are old butterflies, which have survived the attacks of predators, and therefore, are fit and old butterflies!

But I found evidence of one butterfly which had not won one such battle...





I think that's from a SOUTHERN BIRDWING....




There the wing was, lying on the floor of the forest area....it brought me, for an instant, face to face with death, impermanence and loss...and this butterfly had yet made the place a little more beautiful, even in its death....before I went on to try and draw morals out of this, I snapped myself out of my mood, and walked on!


*

The area around the Valley School is one of my favourites; there is never any lack of lovely sights to see. This is the plaque of the Krishnamurthi Foundation Retreat:



The birds we saw over the past two weekends were of delightful variety; the most spectacular of them, were, of course, the ASIAN PARADISE FLYCATCHER, which I could not get on camera at all. But other beautiful birds did co-operate a little more; here's a male TICKELL'S BLUE FLYCATCHER:



( LOTS of photographs here; look at leisure )

Two random images I liked very much, to close this. One was of the raindrops on this thorn:





And the other, the lovely pattern this fallen palm trunk made, across the stream:





Looking forward to more birding trips, as winter progresses and more migrants come into Bangalore!



*

This morning, I found another Common Evening Brown butterfly on my kitchen towel!





KM is muttering about jobless people who keep taking photographs in their kitchen early in the morning...

It was quite amazing this afternoon. As I opened my front door to go in, I noticed four butterflies over my front door...and three of them flew into the open doorway,flew a fair distance in disciplined formation, and settled on my dining room window, which faces on to a ventilation shaft of the building...




They didn't flutter about very much, and looked rather settled at the window-pane; but I didn't want them to be caught indoors, and opened the window to let them out....





But..they seemed in no hurry to go, and I had to brush them gently off the window pane in order to get them back outdoors where they belonged!

Can someone tell me what butterflies these are, and why this happened? I saw yet another of these butterflies on the staircase as I went down this evening....their wings are a little ragged, does that mean anything?

They seem to have five rings on their wings, so, I feel, given the logic of butterfly nomenclature, they might *not* be called Common Five-Rings...I thought they might be Evening Browns, but am not sure of that, too....



*

Due to the constant rain, the paths and slopes at the Valley School area were full of lush vegetation, and the wildflowers were out in their hundreds, too. Ideal conditions for butterflies and insects and all the "et cetera"s that make Life Under Foot so fascinating!

Of course, I am now a nice certified "L board" when it comes to butterfly id's as well. These creatures have got birds beaten hollow. You have the wings-open appearance,and you have the wings-closed appearance, the male, the female, the larva, the pupa...and just when you think you are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel it turns out that this is a butterfly which is mimicking another one! GRRRRRR!

Oh, well, following my usual practice of trying for a couple hours or so on the Net,and if I can't get any positive id, ASK (Ask S Karthik), here are some:

A lovely ZEBRA BLUE:




A HEDGE BLUE;




( more flutterby's )

This beautiful, armoured BEETLE was happily going about its business, unaware that it was being photographed at close quarters!






If anyone can give me any help at all with the flower, insect or any other id's, I will be very grateful....that is, I will be full of grate...!