Caterpillar

Update Identification - Charaxes agrarius, Anomalous Nawab.

Due to heavy fain which continued all night and well into the morning, it was obvious that a bug safari was going to be out of the question. I had another, indoors photo session planned as a favor to another blipper and so thought of blipping that. But, shortly after 10am the rain finally stopped, so I thought I would give the safari a go.

I really wasn't expecting much, with the cloudy, dull conditions and the cool temperature. Also, I was only going to have the first 25 yards of the safari available to me, as the path alongside the paddy fields becomes very slippery and the 20' drop to the rocky stream is just too much of a risk with this old body of mine.

Still, in only 20 minutes, I managed plenty of blip material from three subjects, this caterpillar being a very easy choice for the blip position.

A week or two ago, I downloaded images of caterpillar, pupae and eggs, for every butterfly that I had identified. While doing so, it became plainly obvious that my powers of observation were slightly lacking, as I had not seen even half of the caterpillars before, this specimen being one of them.

This is the caterpillar of the butterfly that I posted back in January. Such a distinctive caterpillar and hard to believe that I have never seen it before. In fact, I very nearly walked passed it today, as it just looked like a fallen seed head.

Dave