Macro Monday

This is a close up of a flower bud of the alien-invasive, Lantana camara in my garden. The flowers of this plant attract a lot of butterflies.

Macro Monday HQ is at Lisa's Chaos.

Wordless Wednesday

Dawn of a Dropwing

The front covers of the only two books dedicated to the dragonflies and damselflies of Sri Lanka has one thing in common. They both feature a widespread Oriental dragonfly, Dawn Droping Trithemis aurora. Sri Lanka is home to 117 species of dragonflies and damselflies out of which a whopping 53 54 are endemic. Some of these Sri Lankan specials are strikingly coloured too. How then can you explain this species of dragonfly being chosen to adorn the front covers of the said books? They say not to judge a book from its cover. I know this is a tough one.

I am happy to announce that my dragonfly pond has produced the desired results. These specifically are attracting more dragonflies to my garden, getting them to breed in the pond and opening up many photo opportunities for me in the process.

Of the numerous dragonflies that have shown interest at my pond, the Dawn Dropwing has shown a remarkable breeding success during April and May. Its emergence as most other dragonflies happen at night in the cover of darkness - typically at around 8.00 p.m., when I do not like anything to come between me and my TV.

Dragonflies and Damselflies lay their eggs in fresh water where their larva aka. nymph aka. naid grow. In order to transform into a dragonfly, the nymph should to leave the aquatic world and attach itself to a leaf, rock or twig near the water. In my pond, the cradle often takes the form of the outer wall of the raised rectangular rim.

This is how the nymph of Dawn Dropwing looks like when it has surfaced out to the open.

Would it ever make to a front cover of a popular natural history book on dragonflies? I doubt.

Most of these photographs were taken in April, which is the hottest month here. Even working at night made no difference as it was devilishly humid. This was made worse by the mosquitoes, which forced me to be fully clothed in outdoor wear to prevent them from causing havoc. From the moment the dragonfly nymph surfaces out of the water to the time it ends its metamorphosis as a teneral or a young dragonfly can take several hours. So, yes, these pictures were obtained in pretty sweaty circumstances!

Anyway, this is how it looks when the teneral dragonfly begins to emerge breaking the larval skin during the early stages of its final metamorphosis.

The sand particles sticking on the nymph's moist body give it a good camouflague by disguising its real profile against potential predators. However, the ghostly teneral that emerges is pale in comparison and could be easily spotted by predators. This is a critical stage of its metamorphosis. As the helpless teneral emerge, it becomes easy prey for predators lurking near the water. Look how the ants gang up against one sorry teneral Dawn Dropwing to which dawn never dawned. (Kim, it was too late when I found this)

Post-mortem: the ants have punctured a hole the young dragonfly's body in the thorax as its blood (hemolymph) was being pumped during the process of metamorphosis. This drained vital supplies needed for its body to expand and halted the process of growth. Click on the image below to view a large image to see a drop of its blood in the back of its thorax clearly.

Eventually, the ants succeeded in inflicting a slow death on the teneral through this fatal bite and they marched away with their prized catch soon after.

Coming back to regular cases of metamorphosis, as the nymph works its way out of the exoskeleton the end of the abdomen remains inside the exoskeleton. The dragonfly then flips itself upward by a move that is similar to an upside down sit-up. It then grabs onto the lifeless exoskeleton and pulls out the remainder of its abdomen. After a while it looks like this.

The wings, when the dragonfly first emerges, are shriveled and opaque. The wings are pumped full of fluid to expand them and when fully expanded, they harden and finally become transparent.

Here's a different angle of the above.

The young male Dawn Dropwing obelisking below looks similar to the female in colours. It takes several days before it assumes the guady colours of the adult males as in the very first picture.

By the way, this water lily species (?a hybrid of Nymphaea nouchali) is doing very well in my pond. Here's a close up of its anthers.

I conclude this post with an abstract of a male Dawn Dropwing, photographed sometime ago. It doesn't show its real life colour though, which is why it is an abstract! I am looking forward for more captures of the adult showing its real life colours. The one shown at the very top was taken in the ancient history.

Related posts:

The Pond

Dawn Dropwing

Insex

Macro Monday HQ is at Lisa's Chaos.

Ripleys, believe it or not

had a very good time in their 4-day natural history trip with me last month. We are talking about Dave and Rose Ripley from Wales and their girls, Celyn and Ceinwen, aged 13 and 12. Before the tour, Dave wrote to me “My wife and I enjoy birdwatching, the children not so much...”. And he added “...they would certainly enjoy elephants, snakes, lizards, insects, and birds in moderation.”

We agreed to combine the best of dry and wet lowlands by visiting the Udawalawe National Park and the Sinharaja "World Heritage" rain forest, with more emphasis on the latter.

Our dry zone leg gave plenty of the hoped for Asian Elephants. With Elephants found year-round, in their 100s at times, Udawalawe was a sure bet for seeing them. Additionally we saw Wild Boar, Wild Buffalo, Spotted Deer, Hanuman Langur, Jackal and Ruddy Mongoose. Land monitor, Flap-shelled Terrapin and Mugger Crocodile were some of the reptiles seen at the first leg.

With my 'oozing coolness' , I got the gals in my side and soon witnessed them actively getting involved in spotting birds, with enthusiastic support given by their parents. This resulted in us raking in nearly 100 species of birds on our day 01. These included Malabar Pied Hornbill, Lesser Adjutant, Grey-headed Fish Eagle, Blue-faced Malkoha, Sirkeer Malkoha, Pied Cuckoo, Plum-headed Parakeet, Crested Treeswift, Orange-breasted Green Pigeon, Sri Lanka Green Pigeon, Green Bee-eater, Barred Buttonquail (many), Indian Pitta and Indian Jungle Nightjar.

We also saw a large dragonfly named Elephant Emperor Anax indicus, which was my top highlight for day 01!

Our rain forest leg called for a different approach to get the girls involved – as it entailed exploring the forest on foot. I gave my Swarovski Binocs to Celyn, which she liked a lot.

And I taught young Ceinwen how to do macro-photography using a point and shoot digital camera, which kept her constantly lagging behind. Both girls were sharp-eyed and got involved actively spotting things, which made my job a lot easier. They proved very good companions to have on a rain forest walk. Ceinwen spotted this critter, which was barely 12 mm in length.

I was conveyed a joint communication by the girls that they’d love to see rain forest snakes. This request was met with enthusiastic support and we ended up seeing 9 snakes with 7 of them being found by yours truly. They belonged to 5 species out of which 3 were endemic. They were:

Green Pit Viper Trimeresurus trigonocephalus One lazing individual was found by me in the undergrowth by the roadside. Heard the girls going "awesome".

Green Whip Snake Ahaetulla nasuta – 2 individuals gave amazing views.

Barnes’ Cat Snake Boiga barnesii– A couple of this scarce endemic was found by me in a courtship behaviour. They are called 'cat snakes' due to their vertically elliptical pupils similar to those found in cats. This is a smaller relative of the infamous Brown Tree Snake Boiga irregularis, which caused avian carnage almost wiping out all the native birds of Guam, where RD is known to be working these days.

Common Bronzeback Tree Snake Dendrelaphis tristis - The individual that Ceinwen spotted first of this snake eluded me but this one that I found posed well for everybody.

Sri Lanka Keelbacked Water Snake Xenochropis asperrimus – 2 individuals at the usual spot. Endemic.

Our birding specials included 2 animated Chestnut-backed Owlets – the first of which was spotted by Dave at dawn.

With several decent mixed-species bird flocks, we saw almost all the specials expected to be seen at Sinharaja such as Sri Lanka Blue Magpie, Red-faced Malkoha, Sri Lanka Scaly Thrush, Malabar Trogon, and Crimson-backed Flameback

We also saw a brooding male Sri Lanka Frogmouth in a nest built on a tree branch above a trail. Observing it in the scope we noticed a ready-to-fledge chick. The angle of light did not allow good photography. But you can click here, here and here to see my previous photographs of this species.

We saw plenty of beautiful butterflies, which included this Rounded 6-Lineblue Necaduba berenice ormistoni.

Dragonflies too were out in good numbers. My top highlight was this pair of Sri Lanka Sabretails Megalogomphus ceylonicus in wheel position. This was a dragonfly-lifer for me.

Additionally we saw Amber-winged Glider, Rapacious Flangetail, Dawn Dropwing, Spine-tailed Skimmer, Asian Pintail and Marsh Skimmer.

We saw three species of Robber flies and the best-looking one of them is shown below. The body length of this excluding limbs was about 6 cm as you can judge from scale of the Clidemia hirta leaf on which it is resting. It looked formidable enough to tackle even a Sabretail!

We also saw plenty of amphibians. They'll have to wait for another post as this has already swollen a bit.

Macro Monday

This Robber fly was captured by me at 3 times the life size in my garden. No tripod was used. I got a person to hold a sheet of A4 paper at the background to prevent it from being dark as in these pictures.

Macro Monday HQ is at Lisa's Chaos.