New butterfly

I did two sessions in the grove today, the first at 05:30, crack of dawn. I was hoping to find a frog or a hint of what is around in the night. There were no frogs to be seen, a few sleeping butterflies. I took the butterfly snaps but they all went in the bin, nothing new or unusual. I caught a glimpse of a couple of lizards, one dropped out of a tree and ran for it, no chance of a blip though. Lesson learned, check the trees first thing in the morning in future.

Another lizard popped up out of the undergrowth. It ran halfway up the wall then ran along the wall face and out of sight. It was easily two feet long, but most of that was tail. I would guess a body length of no more than five inches. I have seen these before, in fact I even had one in the house. On the flat, they run along on their hind legs and are extremely fast, it totally destroyed my neatly arranged shelf in the workshop, a bit like the legendary bull in the china shop.

Second session 08:30, twenty feet into the grove and I had already seen six blippable opportunities and missed them all, I had a feeling that this was not going to be a good day. In all I took sixty five photos, including three types of ladybird, a dragonfly, copulating wasps, various butterflies and a caterpillar. The caterpillar will make the reject file, one of the ladybirds is a doubtful but the rest went in the bin.

Towards the end of the session this butterfly appeared, one that I had not seen before and I realized that this was my last chance for a decent blip for the day. It was spending about four seconds per bloom, but wasn't hitting adjacent blooms, it would flit off about six feet and then alight on another bloom. It didn't seem to have a problem with me approaching, unlike some.

Once I had established its pattern of feeding, I moved around and got ahead of its path and waited for it to come to me. After a four or five of laps of the grove, I eventually got close enough for the shot. I did get one shot closer than this one, but the focus was not quite there. The blipped shot could have been better, but with only a second to focus, it was difficult. I am happy with the blip and relieved, I nearly had to go back for a third session or give you a flower blip. Don't get me wrong now, nothing wrong with flower blips, in fact, I have a series planned as there are some very nice flowers growing wild here.

Next job is to soak my burning feet and feel sorry for myself, maybe back to the food shop for more sympathy.

Update - Chilasa clytia clytia (Common Mime)

Dave