Tuesday, November 18, 2008

16th Nov 2008 Rabale

It was a wonderful morning and we had wonderful time at Rabale.
Started with information on plants and flowers, then birds started appearing and
then as we were returning back the butterflies started becoming active. We saw almost all types of pansies Lemon, Chocolate, Grey, Peacock and finally also Blue Pansy (my favorite).

Saw many trees, plants, flowers but one of the interesting one was the common cowitch.

Common Cowitch also called khaj-kuiri as the pods if touched would give etching for a month or so. But also prof. Das mentioned that it has very high medicinal values mainly in medicines for harmone growth.





In birds the major the main attraction was the Black Eagle. It was sheer pleasure to watch it scan the forest and then go between the trees and reappearing at some other place from within the trees. Just looking at sheer wing span was a pleasure.





Second was the mystery warbler with a yellow brow, so might be a tickell's or sulphur bellied. Other birds seen Ashy drongo, Crimson sunbird, purple sunbird, Jungle babblers, Golden Oriole, Shikra, Crested serpent eagle, green bee eater.

Other butterflies seen were the Baronet, Great orange tip, Yellow orange tip, plain tiger, stripped tiger, blue tiger, glassy tiger, Common emigrant, Common gull, Danaid eggfly.

Here is a pic of a butterfly not sure of id (Is it some pierrot?)



Baronet


Lemon Pansy


On one of the shrubs we saw this very beautiful caterpillar but equally dangerous.
It was later seen on the apta tree or the bahunia and one of the spines poked Julius.
He was pain from the burning for quite some time.



When we were about call it a day we came across a huge group of butterflied mud puddling.
They were a mixed group as seen in the pic below