Visit to Phinda Resources Reserve, Zululand

Hi All

Seems like ages since my last entry, I have been off in the wilds of the Zululand-Mozambique border area. More about that when I've pp'd the 250-odd shots I took.

Before that a bunch of us went up to Phinda, a luxury game reserve near Mkuze in central Zululand. It has a wide range of habitats and we were hoping for a productive weekend. Well, we had one good day basically - Saturday the 19th was sunny but the clouds appeared on Sunday then it rained cats & dogs on the Monday.

I've already posted the spiders we saw:
http://photocamel.com/forum/macro-cl...ng-spider.html


And some of the butterflies:
http://photocamel.com/forum/macro-cl...-zululand.html

First of all here's some of the scenery to set the scene:



We were incredibly lucky to find a tree infested with Millar's Buff Deloneura millari. These are hardly ever seen unless you bump against a tree where they are sucking at scale insect nectar, upon which they fly out with a weird combination of fast wingbeats and slow progress. This one happily settled on a grass stem to give us the photo opportunity of a lifetime:



Incredibly, in the neighbouring tree we found this rare mistletoe, Oncocalyx bolusii, foodplant of an even rarer butterfly, White-spotted Sapphire Iolaus lulua. The butterfly wasn't out but we should have a chance of finding it later in the year.




The butterflies were getting cheeky at Phinda. This Layman Amauris albimaculata albimaculata found a nice perch on one of the rangers' caps, reminding us that butterfly watching is getting as popular as birding...



All the best

Steve