Banana butterfly

I was awake early today so found myself walking the grid at 06:00. I wouldn't have come to the grove this early except that the sun was shining and the skies were clear, but the suns rays had not reached the ground as yet, blocked by the curtain of trees that lined the stream. Not a single frog in sight, in fact I only saw one dragonfly, desperately looking for somewhere to land, but didn't want to get his feet wet on the dew coated leaves. When he eventually landed, I thought that he would be an easy target in the coolness of the morning, but I probably moved in a bit too fast and he was gone.

After only ten minutes I decided to cut my losses and return to the house for some brekky, having not fired off a single shot, the shame. The good news was that my new insect repellant seemed to be working well and my new technique for passing between bushes with my forearm vertical in front of my face worked well too, not a single spider caught in my eyebrows this morning.

One thing that I did notice was a blue banded bee, hopping from bloom to bloom. But the blooms were not sufficiently open at this time, so it was actually feeding through the base of the flower, probably through a hole cut by the wasps. I had noticed over the last weeks, that wasps do not feed through the bell of the bloom, but cut a hole at the base of unopened heads with its powerful jaws to access the nectar. I have wanted to blip this practice but the photos keep getting superseded by fancy butterfly shots.

The huge carpenter bee, too large to feed through the tiny open blooms, feeds the same way, through the wasps hole. In the blipped combo shot, it can be seen that the bee does not enter the bell of the bloom. I will have to try and get a better shot of this. It is 07:15 now, time to head back to the grove for my first proper session, we'll call the earlier session reconnaissance.

07:45 now and what a great session it was. The furry bee was out, but I couldn't get close enough so had to bin the shots. The red winged dragon appeared and I proceeded to chase that all around the grove, collecting about twenty shots. Two new butterflies were also captured, giving me three good shots to choose from. The dragon was my favorite, but has been featured before. Both the butterfly shots were good, just not as impressive.

It seems folly, greedy even, to return to the grove for another session, as if the decision that I had to make wasn't difficult enough. I could put them all in blipfolio, but I am sure that you'll all tire of that if I use it too much. Greedy or not, I was hooked and having too much fun, so with a fresh application of bug repellant, return I did.

To the list I added: a caterpillar, cockroach type insect, large brown hopper, brown butterfly, spider, end view of a green hopper, a potter wasp and a moth wasp feeding. The choice still came down to the first session's contributions. The butterfly feeding on the banana tree flower, with its huge proboscis coming out of the top of its head, won the day. That was a toughie.

Dave