Celebrating an Early Christmas at Dairy Farm!
5:45am. Rain – lots of it. And the type that looked like it would last the entire day! Not gonna stop us from marching into the muddy trails in search for bugs…! lol
During this trip, the entire groupy gathered around a caterpillar. An extremely beautiful one that’s not too too common – the larva of an Archduke (Lexias pardalis dirteana). It’s unique outgrowing “bristles” reminded us of a Christmas tree, and most caterpillars that looked like this had been called the Christmas Cat. As usual, I volunteered to be the last to shoot, and hogged this fella for quite a while.
#1 Munching done, now going up and down the stalk in search of more food!
#2 View of it’s bottom
#3 Side view
#4 Side view while letting you peek at it’s grubby legs
#5 Another view of it’s bottom
Horace Tan from the Butterfly Circle has an excellent article documenting the life history of the archduke here:
https://butterflycircle.blogspot.com/life-history-of-archduke/
And here are the other subjects of the day… not that much less important!
While waiting for the rest, I chanced upon this golden orange robberfly hanging from a leaf.
#6 Robberfly
It flew away after a few shots, and I found this bug right above! Looks like a hairy little assassin bug.
#7 Assassin Bug
#8 Head shot. One of my flashes refused to fire!! argh
#9 Horned back bug. Not it’s exact name, but we gave it this name due to the 2 horns on it’s back. Anyone with the exact ID? Quite a common sight in Singapore.
#10 Closer view of it’s face
#11 A blur blur view of the Hasselt’s Spiny Orbweaver (Gasteracantha hasseltii). Should be a male? Very small compared to the usual yellow version:
#12 Female Hasselt’s Spiny Orbweaver
Next was this pair of cute crab spiders. Both female. Not lesbian since they refused to touch each other while scrambling around on the flower. lol.
#12 You take your corner.. I take my corner!!
#13 Not talking to you… hmmpf!!!
#14 *sniff your butt*
#15 Last shot of the day – a female crab spider devouring a fly/wasp/flying ant?
The complete albums can be viewed here and here.
