Brown darter

I only had time for one quick session at the grove today, as I had to go and buy my ticket to Kuala Lumpur (KL) for next Monday. It is time for my bi-annual VISA run, it is a real pain as I won't be able to post, as I cannot find the camera cable. I will still take photos, but will have to back blip.

Although the session was only twenty minutes and the pickings were slim, I still ended up with choices: three butterfly shots, a hopper, a super dragon shot and a mediocre lizard. Although the dragon was easily the most impressive of the images, I went with the brown darter butterfly as I have not posted it before and the dragon would have been a repeat. The brown darter is a relation of the orange darter (Chinese binomial darter) that I postedpreviously and I don't see it too often. I have captured it before, but it didn't make blip.

The last few days there has been a guy cutting back the undergrowth at the grove. He is using a small sickle so it is going to take him quite some time. It is not unusual to see a guy cutting a lawn with a pair of scissors. On the positive side, it will make it easier to spot the snakes, but the cleaning operation is removing a lot of the blooms that attract the butterflies and insects, which in turn bring out the dragonflies and damsels.

The framed climbing fruit plant collapsed in the storm last week, under the weight of the rain. The whole area has been cleared and a new frame built for the next crop. All the rubbish and cuttings have been dumped onto the compost heap, so those plants are now unavailable. Still, at the rate at which plants grow here, especially with all this precipitation, the set back will only last a week or two.

I have been eyeballing some more patches of derelict land, but that would be a last resort, as I have not finished with the grove yet.

Update - Clouded Skipper (Lerema accius)

Dave