Friday, August 12, 2011

A Mission on 6 Aug @ Lornie Trail

Within 20 minutes, I was at Lornie Trail, this time with a mission that I had no control in determining its outcome - to hunt for a brown skipper that I had shot some weeks ago.

This Saturn (Zeuxidia amethystus amethystus) was initially puddling on the forest floor. It was so well camouflaged that I didn't notice it at all until it was scared into a hasty flight from the ground and landed on a tree trunk.
After taking a few shots of the Saturn, I went straight to the reservoir edge. Several Chocolate Grass Yellows (Eurema sari sodalis) were flitting and feeding on the Mile-a-minute (Mikania micrantha ) flowers.
The Contiguous Swift (Polytremis lubricans lubricans) seems to be a permanent resident of this particular location . It has the habit of opening its wings partially when perching on the foliage.
A few Lascars were frolicking and feeding on the flowers under the morning sun. I was spoilt for choices as well as indecisive when a few of them appeared to synchronise their perch at the same time on different flowers. Finally I managed to take a shot which turned out to be a Burmese Lascar (Lasippa heliodore dorelia) - the rarest Lascar.
This is a Malayan Lascar (Lasippa tiga siaka) - can you see the subtle differences between these two Lascars ? Yes, if we examine and compare the relative sizes of the row of forewing marginal spots.
One of my underside shots of the same specimen.
While I was busy shooting the Lascars, I noticed an orange-red lycaenid zipping past me rapidly from the canopy level and landed on some flowers. This is a male Cornelian (Deudorix epijarbas cinnabarus) - an uncommon species that resembles a Rapala species.
Psyche (Leptosia nina malayana) loves to relax and flutter casually at low level, usually without perching unless it is attracted by flowers.
A Yellow butterfly without any markings on the underside wings, Tree Yellow (Gandaca harina distanti) is rather easily identifiable in the wild.
A pristine Large Snow Flat (Tagiades gana gana) was spotted perching underneath a leaf. I didn't know why it suddenly change its normal behaviour, resting on a leaf surface.
Another Flat skipper, this time the Common Snow Flat (Tagiades japetus atticus) took a short rest under the sun - a few more seconds were what I needed to snap its underside shot when it folded its wings .
Finally, on my way out, a weird and fluffy critter caught my attention. What is this ?
Though the white-antennaed brown skipper that I wished to hunt for did not show up - or it did but I missed it, I wasn't disappointed at all as the number of shots that I had taken was beyond my expectation - another fruitful outing for me.

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