Hi All

Jeremy Dobson very kindly took me up to Thabazimbi in the Waterberg on Saturday after a week of hard work in Johannesburg. We were after the Darker Commodore Precis antilope. When we got there it was very cold and not much was on the wing except these lovely little Orange Tiger moths Secusio strigata. They were extremely wary and this is the best shot I got; at least his orange hindwings were on show, which is not usually the case - they normally hide them under the forewings...

Hi all

We had a blinder of a weekend up in Zululand over Easter. I'm going to post some of my favourite pix here, but in fairness to members of Lepsoc Africa I'm going to post the full story in the e-Newsletter.

We started off at Lake Sibaya, a place that hasn't been visited by butterflyers for a long time. It's a landlocked freshwater estuarine lake south of Kosi Bay. At the gate there is a marsh where we found this Osiris Smoky Blue Euchrysops osiris female:
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Hi All

Last weekend the KZN Branch of Lepsoc Africa and Birdlife Port Natal had a joint field meet at Iphithi Nature Reserve, which is just at the bottom of my garden. Although it is a popular bird ringing spot we had never done a butterfly survey there before.

We first started finding damselflies. I love these delicate little creatures even though I know little about them. There were quite a few of these Common Citrils around; I managed to get one without using flash,...

Hi all

We got some rather good butterflies recently. We went to Kranskloof Nature Reserve to look for early stages of the Karkloof Emperor Charaxes karkloof karkloof. Here is a fertile egg (you can tell from the brown band):



I only noticed the little white tick-like creature when I finished the 33-image stack.

And here is a first instar...

Hi All

I managed to get almost all the life history of this lovely little insect on record over the past few weeks...

Egg (hugely magnified; it's about 1.5mm long)



First instar larva about to moult (about 4mm long):

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Hi All

Went to Rwayi, a beautiful spot on the South Coast I discovered recently. Got these shots:



Clover Blue female - my first upperside of this difficult species



There were some nice fresh Aranda Coppers around,...

Hi All!

Was up in Joburg this last weekend staying with Jeremy Dobson and family. The weather had been great all week whilst we were at work, but true to form the clouds came up on Saturday. We did get some nice shots on the hills above Witpoortjie. I posted these flower shots:

http://photocamel.com/forum/macro-cl...tml#post520417

Also, if you go to the end of this long post you can see some butterfly shots I got:...

Last weekend I went to Butterfly World to do a signing for Esther. I decided to have a go at photographing exotics!

I got some nice ones of an Emerald Swallowtail Papilio palinurus, see this post:

http://photocamel.com/forum/macro-cl...llowtails.html

There were lots of lovely swallowtails around, like this Scarlet Mormon Papilio rumanzovia:

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Hi All

We had a field meet at the University of KwaZulu=Natal Westville campus today. Over 20 people turned up and there were lots of butterflies out. Julia and Charles Botha had set it up, and we started by putting up traps for Emperors. We found both Pearl and Blue-Spotted.

We found a female Sooty Blue, freshly emerged, sitting on a leaf:



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Hi All

I posted some of the pix I took last weekend on the forum, here's a link:

http://photocamel.com/forum/macro-cl...tml#post438564

On Saturday Jeremy Dobson kindly took me first of all to the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens, where I tried unsuccessfully to photograph the local form of the Forest White Belenois zochalia, form immaculata. They were very active and would not go to the few flowers that were out. As the weather...