early morning Caterpillar

An early start at the common today, 07:00am. The sky was overcast and there was a slight chill in the air, reflected by the security wrapped up on an overcoat, scarf and head gear despite the temperature being mid 70s. Temperature is relative to what you are used to, in Sweden this would be a pleasant summers day.

Because of the temperature and the lack of sun, the insects were not moving yet, no dragon clouds or butterflies apart from a few small browns amongst the grass stems and hoppers dodging my feet. I made my way directly to the mimosa bush as there was always something happening there.

Yesterday I researched the two headed butterfly that I had been collecting images of for the last two weeks. It is called a hairstreak but I did not nail it down completely. Last night I wrote an article all about it from the research and my own observations, so today's plan was to collect some hairstreak shots for a blip - nada. Planning blips just does not work in my experience. The text will keep until another day, no blip rules about the text.

Still, not a bad session, Two spiders, one of them new, two caterpillars, one new, two bugs, one of them new, a hoverfly and a decent image of a green Sabina dragonfly. As I was shooting, I was thinking that the new bug was favorite for blip, but when I saw the image of the dewdrops on the new caterpillar, there was no question. I went with a cropped image for impact, the other half is just more of the same anyway.

I am thinking about collecting a few samples of these caterpillars, so that I can establish what species they are. Might even get some emerging butterfly images if I am lucky. I need to figure out the best way to do this.

Merry Christmas everyone, hope you all have a great day with your families.

Dave