Tamili Lacewing Caterpillar story: This was on our 10 days trip to North Karnataka in search of birds and butterflies. I was accompanied by Adavanne Shivaprajash and Girija Shivaprakash, two very keen butterfly and bird watchers from Mysore. Though we did not concentrate much on moths in the field, whenever we returned to hotel in the night, we had visual treat every single day, as hundreds of moths gathered around a tube light near our room. I photographed around 100 moths within the span of 3 days. The room cleaners were very friendly and took me to their very tiny rooms and showed me many more species of moths. They also gave descriptions of couple of huge moths that resembled Atlas and Owl moths.This particular bunch of caterpillars was at uLavi in Karnataka, a very beautiful religious place located in the backdrop of Western Ghats. I was here couple of times earlier in the hope of seeing *Iraota timoleon* but only managed with mammal Leopard, regular sightings of Great Indian Hornbill and of course lot of butterflies except that Lycaenid mentioned earlier. This was at the end of our long birding and butterfly session, when me and Girija were relaxing near a tree, Shivaprakash sir was still all energetic in exploring the place and eventually spotted a huge bunch of colorful cats crawling all over. We had lot of confusion on figuring out the plant on which these fellows were feeding on. There was signficant intertwining of two plants and the caterpillars were munching on the stem and near the petiole region. There were many small groups of caterpillars huddling together. We sort of zeroed onto a plant which was later identified by Dr. E.S. Santhosh Kumar as "Naravelia zeylanica". Since this was the new record, we were not sure, so wanted to recheck the photos, but got too busy with my Graduate course work. Good that I posted this photo and Keith pointed out our mistake. In a week's time I will be back at my school where I have my external hard disks. So, hopefully we will nail down the right host plant, shortly.
Malabar Tree Nymph Courtship Story: This is also during the same trip. This particular photo was taken at Sathodi Falls, which is in North Karnataka amidst Western Ghats. Three of us were slowly approaching the Sathodi Falls, with lot of noise in the background of fellow non-ecotourists. Most of the Falls in Karnataka suffer from huge amounts of unmanageable plastic litter every year. Heavy rains wash this off and probably carry them to Arabian sea. I just hate to see plastic in Evergreen or anywhere else for that matter. Once in Brahmagiri Wildlife Sanctuary, Karnataka, 4 of my favourite puddling spots were fully covered with plastic and it took 3 visits to take them off. I have photographed more than 150 species at these puddling spots. Not sure which bunch of genes make us so in-human. Anyway, so we were slowing approaching the falls spotting many of the endemic Western Ghat birds and butterflies, when suddenly Shivaprakash sir spotted two feathers falling over and rising back, at a distance, among the dense foliage. Since it continued for a while, we were almost sure that its a bunch of butterflies. Malabar Tree Nymph is my favorite butterfly of all. This is also very apparent with my email ID itself !!! I sometimes even dream of living a life of Malabar Tree Nymph flying nonchalantly over the utopian canopies of Western Ghats. As we approached, it became obvious that its indeed a courtship. That was the first time I am seeing them courting at such a low height. They usually prefer tall trees where they can courtship for hours without any disturbance. Bannerghatta Butterfly Park once tried to breed these angels and failed, as they were not courtshipping. I think right amount of humidity, temperature, sunlight and presence of tall ever green trees plays a very important role in their courtship. So, I would not be surprised if Western Ghat endemics fail to court in the outskirts of highly polluted Bengaluru, if we don't create Western Ghats like environ. We had to cross a small bridge and go off the track to get close to this couple. One has to be very careful while taking the photos of courting couples. The idea is not to disturb them much. Imagine someone taking photos from very close range during your honeymoon !!! How irritating would that be ? So, we maintained some distance not to cause any perturbation. The lady landed on a leaf close to us. The male was still trying to seduce the female by beating his wings over her antennae. Since both of them were huge ( in terms of butterfly sizes) and close to us, it was a visual spectacle. The male would fan-out his hair pencils intermittently followed by gentle strokes onto her antennae. This continued for quite sometime, while we got some of our good shots as well. With the intention of not disturbing the couple further, we just left the place, wishing them all luck for courtship and ovipositing. Kishen On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 8:39 PM, Vijay Vasant Barve <[email protected]>wrote: > > > Dear Kishen, > > Please send the details and most importantly story behind the photos. > Please refer http://diversityindia.org/photoofyear.php > > Regards, > > Vijay > http://diversityindia.org/ > > > On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 1:24 PM, Kishen Das <[email protected]>wrote: > >> >> >> In the year 2010, I never visited India, so sending two pics from the year >> 2009. >> >> Kishen >> >> >> > > -- Enjoy
