Looking down

 Fresh leaves, dried leaves, I do spy
light green, dark green, brown...
and even a Lemon Pansy butterfly. 

Green circles, pink stars
Brown sand and grey wall, and
Amaryllis lilies, from afar.

 

Sunshine on the wall

Catopsilia pomona, the common emigrant or lemon emigrant - resting on my wall

Come, rest for a while,
scraps of sunshine
flitting across my view.

At the traffic light, I watch

your crazy parabolas

two by two.

Have the rains signalled
your departure?
Are you leaving for the hills?
Emigrant  that you are
Thanks for stopping by.

Resting place

On a journey, ill:
my dream goes wandering
over withered fields
- Basho

My old body:
a drop of dew grown
heavy at the leaf tip
- Kiba, 19th century

Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going —
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
- Zen master Kozan Ichikyo, 1360



Zen and the poetry of death

Brown on brown

Junonia lemonias, the lemon pansy

Crunching dry leaves of summer,
eyes staring at me,
a basking pansy did I come across.

The teak tree butterfly garden

Tectona grandis.  In flower.  Our neighbour's garden

October 2nd

October brings flowers in plenty to our neighbour's teak tree.  I love to watch the tree.  I watch from our bedroom and I watch from our balcony.  Sometimes it is a Drongo that provides entertainment,  quite often the rose-ringed parakeets perch on the uppermost branch and screech indignantly while squirrels scamper up and down the tree trunk.  Today, it was the butterflies and bees show that I binge watched.

All through the day the Common Emigrants flitted ceaselessly from flower to flower, up and down, side to side.  The window frames seemed to be filled with these wandering whites.  As I followed them with my binoculars, a  Crimson Rose fluttered into view, its flight less rushed and frenzied as it gently alighted on a  flower. A light breeze rustled those large teak leaves and it flew on.

Then there was a blur of yellow, a pair of Tawny Costers and a bunch of Common Leopards flitted around on the left.  More white Common Emigrants to the right, and among them sat one Chocolate  Pansy, with its ragged wing edges, slowly circling on the same flower, unlike the other butterflies.

It was the turns of the blues then, a bunch of Blue Tigers and Glassy Tigers passed by.  They did not seem terribly interested and moved on quickly.  Teak nectar was not their favourite drink maybe? A Common Crow also drifted by, but seemed disinterested with the drinks on offer and floated away.

More Common Emigrants, yellow ones and whiter ones.  Oh wait, that yellow one opened its wings, could it be the Yellow Orange Tip (Ixias pyrene).  These butterflies generally come in after the monsoons, so have the rains brought them?   More whites, but these had black edges.  With Bhanu's Field Guide I identified them as Common Albatross Appias albina.

And into the "garden" came a much larger butterfly, solitary, green and black, fluttering its wings even as it alighted on a flower.  it was beautiful and striking, and was unfamiliar to me.  Flick through the book, peer through the binoculars, and now its gone behind the large teak leaf, hmmm a swallowtail for sure, no not a peacock, oh its back in view, I really need to learn to read Tamil, scan the book once again.  Could it be a Tailed Jay?  I need to verify.  Search in Duck Duck Go Go.   Graphium agamemnon, common and not threatened, more frequent post monsoon.  And its host plant is the Polyalthia!  Maybe that's what it was.  Nothing else fitted the bill.

The enduring Teak
and the ephemeral butterfly
Entwined.

Oct 3rd

Common Jezebels this morning, at the tree.

Oct 4th

And a pair of Danaid Eggfly were having a leisurely sip.

Oct 7th

I continue to see new species.  Today, two Common Jays chased each other from flower to flower.  At the crown, Plain Tigers fluttered through the blooms.

Fluttered by

Junonia lemonias, the lemon pansy

fluttered by our home

“Come, butterfly
It's late-
We've miles to go together.” 
― Bashō Matsuo, 

In my kitchen, Selvi stirs in 
curry leaves...a butterfly
floats and balances
― with apologies to Basho Matsuo,

A Common Jay

Common Jay - Graphium doson - 

Fluttered by this morning as we walked the streets of Kottivakkam.

Guduvancheri surprises

Glassy blue tigers A joy to come up on them when least expected.  The sun was blazing, and I was out on work. And this leaf was a beauty

Saving the laburnum. RIP Caterpillars

There's a small Cassia fistula growing in our garden, very slowly at that. It is less than six months old. It put out a bunch of new shoots last week. I went to inspect it yesterday, and to my astonishment and dismay, several stems were bare of leaf, chomped away.

 I mistook the caterpillar culprits for those of the common lime, and so gently moved them to the much bigger lime tree. They seemed to settle in well, and were wandering up the tree, and examining out leaves. However, google and the internet revealed that they were Lemon Emigrant caterpillars, which love Cassia! So what was I to do? Four leaf-chomping caterpillars and the little sarakonrai was not likely to survive, I thought.

No other suitable Cassia in the neighbourhood.

I wandered down to the lime tree in the evening. Three of the caterpillars were missing. I found one, curled up on a lime leaf. I moved it back to the sarakonrai hoping against hope that it would survive. It was gone this morning.

I do feel I panicked, and maybe the sapling would have still survived if I had let the caterpillars be? What if I had not examined the sapling yesterday?

Pongal at Point Calimere - Butterflies at Udayamarthandapuram

(Sheila's picture)

Uttara writes about UMP - 

An irrigation tank fed by water from the Mettur dam, the Udayamarthandapuram Bird Sanctuary was the bird and butterfly lovers’ paradise providing a nice quiet environment except for the noise made by the birds. 

The place was basically like a water body surrounded by vegetation with a path that went all the way around and was more than 3 km long. At times the trees on either side of the path grew tall and met, forming a canopy to create an arch-like effect. 

Also taken by Sheila

At times the path was open to the sky. The place was full of pond herons, grey herons, night herons, purple moorhens, and we also saw pheasant tailed jaçanas, black-headed munias, white ibises and darters. There was also an osprey perched on a pole in the middle of the water body. 

An eagle was also seen though there was some debate on its species. 


Many of us did not even walk the entire perimeter of the sanctuary but even then, a lot of time had already been spent there. It was time to get back because the vehicle had to be sent to pick up Vijay uncle who was to join us then. When we returned to the guest house, the time was 2:45 pm. It was also time for a late lunch at our favourite mess. 

Butterflies!

Can you spot the Common Grass Yellow?
Eurema hecabe.  Maybe this is the
post-monsoon
paler morph?  Caterpillar here.

Me:  I will always remember UMP for the butterflies and the dragonflies.  I went crazy with these winged beauties here, and forgot all about the birds.  It was even greater fun trying to photograph them.  We would slink up on them sloooowly, and just as we got our Panasonic to focus, they would flit away, and then perch a couple of feet away, and the whole process would start again!


India is one of the butterfly hotspots in the world, with around 300 species endemic to us.  I thought this was amazing.  I didnt know this.

Tawny Coster - Acraea terpiscore - common
in Madras too, and I think endemic to India.  Birds find them
unpalatable, and this is how the caterpillar looks.

Common castor - Ariadne merione.  They feed
on castor, are found all over the country

I wonder if this is also common castor or
angled castor?  The wings never rested flat for this butterfly.

A Common Leopard (Phalanta phalantha), basks in the sun.
They love the sun, and love lantanas as well!  

A pair of Common Ceruleans (Jamides celeno)
were in the shade.  These are endemic to India, and
in the dry season, they look a lighter colour
(almost white), as compared to this.

A Common Wanderer - that we found wandering!
If you would like to see how beautiful it looks when the wings are open,
click here.

Lemon pansy - Junonia lemonias.
The caterpillar is quite spectacular!
Its an easier butterfly to photograph.
Basks nicely and cooperatively!

Actually, even the undergrowth near the saltpans had some pretty butterflies.  I could not "capture" that Painted Jezebel that kept flitting about.  And the Crimson Roses in the Kodiakarai grasslands would not still, but made such a beautiful sight, as their red and black went like a blur among the blue meadow flowers.  These beauties below from around the salt pans.

And here is the White Orange Tip.
Ixias marianne, which I first saw in Bharatpur.

A male Danaid Eggfly.  Hypolimnas misippus
The female loves fancy dress.

Dragonflies


These are easier models, they know how to sit still!  The trick is in spotting them, which quite often I don't.

The Ruddy Marsh skimmer - male.

 

Green Marsh Hawk (I think).
Spectacular!
Supposedly pretty common, but my first sighting.

Winged visitors

An injured semi looper moth -Trigonodes hyppasia  

Lemon pansy butterfly

Tailless Blue

Is this a Egnasia ephyrodalis moth?  

They fly in at dusk
And die at night.
Our home,
their final resting place.

Blue pansy butterfly

The same blue pansy, close to death

A Lemon Pansy stops by

It stopped for a while on my bathroom floor

Almost stepped on it, as I walked in the door.

Lemon pansy, did you flee from a foe?

And after a while, where did you go?

Maybe out of the bedroom window,

or protein for my house gecko?

The Parambikulam poem

Frogmouths and hornbills I hoped to see
but the forest teaches you
that what will be, will be.

Parambikulam was our destination,
in our MNS Pongal peregrination.
Up in the Western Ghats is the sanctuary,
a hot spot of floral and faunal diversity.
A 450 year old teak called kanimara
A Southern Birdwing, I marveled at. The shola
Do we realize we have this treasure,
Its worth to us, beyond measure?

Lost New Yorkers and Naturalists seasoned,

a doc on sabbatical and a writer of fiction,

researcher retired, the children enlivened,

our MNS "herd', a local attraction!

Roshan amused us with snake lores galore

Rohan wanted idlis and puris, some more

Uttara yelled in the cold shower with "delight"

and Vish thought she was in a big fight!

Then, Selvam guided us to the frogmouth pair,
An endemic to the ghats, in their lair.
What an endearing sight they made
Leaf-like, in order to detection, evade.

That large, strange gape helps them hunt at night,

Below the forest canopy in quiet flight.
This Youtube video shows you the frogmouth, Sri Lanka
As also this post in my favourite blog from Gallicissa.

While Pranav continued his quest for crawlies,

Vijay thought we would have leech difficulties,

But instead, Mini had ticks more than forty!

Which her dad picked out, before they turned warty.

He also removed the dead rat from our loo

While Dhruva was revealing sides to us we never knew!

Meanwhile, Raji & Raji discussed music and dance

with Kamini, in this most unlikely ambience.

Outside the dorm was the Malabar Whistling Thrush
Its plaintive call heard from the brush.
An Asian Fairy Bluebird, and woodpeckers a plenty
Nut Hatch, treepie, barbets and hill mynahs, more than twenty!
And boars sporting mohawks, their snouts a-twitching
And Nilgiri langurs, their black coats, so fetching!

The gaurs and hornbills decided to keep away

though we looked hard, day after day.

Sheila was fascinated with all the scat

Porcupine, bear, boar and cat!

Mr Sivakumar's record shot did not help resolve the debate

was that Wagtail grey or yellow, my mate?

Shantaram and me made bird lists, meticulous

In this way, it was not left ambiguous.

Eighty two bird species in all we sighted

And tree names also were noted.

Memories of those vistas, I will carry with me

friends, family and happy camaraderie

forest, flower, bird, animal and tree

how I wish we could all let them be.

Let me learn to consume wisely

be responsible and not exploit blithely.

Clean air and freshwater free

For our children and grandchildren and all eternity.

Ten bird species I had never seen before -

• Pompadour green pigeon - what a lovely, musical call!
• Sri Lanka Frogmouth - I was so looking forward to this, and when I think about them now, it still amazes me. If the guide had not actually told me where to look, I just would not have seen them!
• Brown capped pygymy woodpecker - there were actually a couple in the trees just outside the dorm, so one morning I had my heart's fill of viewing them zipping from tree to tree.
• Great black/white-bellied woodpecker - what an amazing, spectacular looking bird!
• Heart-spotted woodpecker - brought a smile to all of us I remember, as he/she pecked furiously and went round and round the trunk, hanging upside down at some point, but still pecking away.
• Small minivets - brilliant flashes of colour
• White-bellied treepie - The white nape and belly, striking when it flew past
• Velvet-fronted Nuthatch - out in the forest, it kept disappearing around the tree trunk, but I had a good look in the trees outside the dorm as well. When my son first heard the name, he heard it as "natraj", and was amazed that the bird had such an Indian name!!
• Asian Fairy Bluebird - It posed for us, like some fashion model on the Vogue cover! With the sun falling on it, it was a brilliant view!
• Chestnut Tailed Starling - there was a tree full of them one evening.

Memorable butterflies

• Southern birdwing
• Jezebel
• Gladeye bushbrown

Deepavali at Rishi Valley - Eight legs & six legs

I always thought the spider was an insect. (Really, what did they teach her in school, you say?) Well, what did you think, huh...huh..go on tell me.

Its quite simple really, spiders have eight legs, insects have six. So spider not insect, ta-da!

So the spider is an arachnid. And guess what, so are scorpions and ticks, arachnids I mean.

And if you are wondering how this great insight dawned on me, it was because of our recent trip to Rishi Valley, some pictures I took of this gigantic "yettu kaal puchi", and then coming back and finding no mention of it in the book called Satpada, Our World of Insects!! I mean, its there in the title staring and screaming at me - SIX LEGS - and I still dont get it. (I can imagine Pranav, the wonder-insect-kid of MNS shaking his head in despair.)

Arachnid aesthetics first

These huge webs are those of the Giant wood spider, and I saw them for the first time in the Rishi Valley campus, and immediately the next day, up on Horsley Hills.

Oh yes look closely, there's the spider to the left and all those white lines...that's how big the web was!

The spider herself. The male is really tiny. Oh, to be a female spider!!

Trying my best to get the spider and the web together

Attempts at art photography. This web survived a really heavy downpour. You can see the water droplets glistening on the web

And this below is what we saw all over the grass, little dew patches I thought, but no, its a spider's web that has caught the morning dew. Check out the tunnel in the middle. its made by an arachnid called a tunnel spider, commonly, a type of wolf spider. I never did see this spider, but I believe its sitting there waiting in that tunnel/funnel, and will emerge as soon as its web vibrates!

If you click on the picture, you will see the funnel in the middle of the sheet-like web.

Insecta next

Lepidoptera - butterflies & moths

I saw -

Tawny costers

Blue Mormon - I wish could have photographed it

Common Mormon

Grass yellows

Plain tiger

White orange tip

And a Common Cerulean

Common Bush Brown

Hymenoptera - bees

The hard working honey bees, were hard at work making honey. I try to reduce the amount of honey I eat or buy these days, (its not making any difference to my waistline), they have a tough enough life it seems, without us eating up all their honey.

Apis dorsata at work

Heteroptera - bugs

Bugs feed on liquid mainly - so they suck, not chew, are quite a nuisance, and also smell foul!

We saw jewel bugs, water skaters, water scorpions and giant water bugs too. The water scorpions and giant water bugs we saw in the stagnant pools of water just off the RV campus, up in the rocks. The water scorpion is quite tiny, maybe an inch long, and I would have missed it, if Thyagu and Murugavel had not lifted it up on a stick and pointed it out. The "tail-like" appendage is actually a breathing tube, I discovered from the Satpada book!

Jewel bug - a shield-back bug, so attractive to look at, but pretty destructive to the plant, sucking out their sap.

Water skaters we saw in plenty at Madhinaiyanicheruvu, the freshwater body, about 20kms from RV.

Odonata - dragon and damselflies

There were so many, but they rarely sat still for me to take a good look, let alone photograph them. Dragonflies are my latest wonder-of-the-natural-world type creature. The glider is the insect with the longest migration....from India to Africa and back, if you please! 14,0000 kms in all.

A Ground Skimmer. Skimmers are found close to the ground and rarely fly more than 1m up. I saw several of these just hovering over the ground.

A Ditch jewel. Seen mainly near sewage ponds, so was this one lost?!

Orthoptera - grasshopper

Just click on the picture below, to appreciate all the colours and markings of the innocuous grasshopper. Take a look at those long legs, ready to put in a loooong jump!

Quite the agricultural pest these insects.

Cataloipus cymbifera is what I thought. But Pranav believes that "it is one of the Migratory Bird Locusts- most probably Schistocerca gregaria, a species that is very well known for its infamous gregariousness (as the name suggests). This is a grasshopper that trims foliage a little too enthusiastically, in the company of hundreds of individuals of its kind".

I made the mistake of asking him why he thought so and he gave me details about the size of the head, and markings on the pronotum, which all was too much for my middle-aged brain to process!! So, i shall just take his word for it. Thanks Pranav!

Coleoptera - beetles

Here's one longhorn beetle that Murugavel found, and placed lovingly on the tree to be photographed.

Longhorn beetle, with their extra long antennae

Hymenoptera - wasps

This looks like a mud dauber wasp of some sort...but all the references I came across show them with yellow legs....so what is this?

It was busy burrowing in the sand just outside the guest house, as the rain started. These wasps paralyse or tranquilise their victims, and then carry them off to their nest, where they are stored for their young ones!

Wasp

I also saw stick insects and mantises, paper wasps and I think even a hornets nest....but I do not have photographs of these.

All in all, a significant improvement in my knowledge of the insect world, in three days, dont you think?