Garden Animals - 24th April to 18th May 2005
These are pictures of some of the animals I had photographed in our garden.
This is a carpenter bee, which is similar in appearance to a bumble bee. But the carpenter bee has no hair on its abdomen, while a bumble bee has hairs on the abdomen. The carpenter bee gets its name from its wood burrowing behaviour.
Please click here to view another type of bee in the garden
This is a big grasshopper I found on a plant.
This is a really small grasshopper, only about 2 centimetres in length.
This beetle is called a lady-bird, which is also known as a lady-bug. They are quite small, about 4 millimetres in length.
The lady-bird beetle likes to eat aphids, which are the small yellow insects just below the lady-bird in this picture.
This is a close-up picture of the lady-bird beetle.
This insect is called a damsel fly.
Another damsel fly.
Butterflies in our garden
This is a chrysalis. Inside this chrysalis, a caterpillar undergoes an extraordinary physical transformation where the caterpillar will eventually turn into a butterfly. How this amazing change occurs is not fully understood.
This shows some reflective surfaces of the chrysalis.
This is the same chrysalis. Some of the colours on the chrysalis come from reflections of nearby leaves of the tree and other objects. The chrysalis is getting darker in colour, which could be a sign that something exciting will happen on the following day.
The shell of the chrysalis has become transparent so that we can see inside it. This amazing thing only happens when the butterfly is nearly ready to emerge-such as 6 to 8 hours before the butterfly begins to move. In this photo, the wings of the butterfly can be seen, and maybe also the eyes. The butterfly has not yet started to move.
This is another view of the chrysalis. This photo has a kind of scary feel, but from something that looks frightening will come something beautiful.
Early in the morning, the butterfly has climbed out of the chrysalis. It is an Australian Crow butterfly (also called a Common Crow). The butterfly cannot fly yet because it is still waiting for its wings to unfold completely and to dry.
The butterfly is almost ready to fly. But it is probably not so impressed with what has been placed next to it!
The butterfly is now ready to fly. In this picture, it is walking to some convenient place on the tree so that it can take to the air for the first time.
This is where the butterfly landed after its very first flight. An amazing thing about butterflies (and other flying insects) is that they can fly without any need of practice. They know how to fly without need of lessons.
This is a large butterfly that really caught my eye while photographing the new butterfly. This is called a Ulysses butterfly. In this photo, it appears to be very ordinary. But there is more to this butterfly than meets the eye. A close look on the back of the neck is a hint of colour - an electric blue colour.
Once the Ulysses butterfly opens its wings, a large area of very intense electric-blue colour is revealed on the back of the wings. Depending on the lighting conditions, the blue colour on the wings can appear from flourescent light-blue to very intensely flourescent dark blue.
This photograph shows more of the spectacular blue colour on the wings of the Ulysses butterfly.
Please click here to view photos of 'flying' Ulysses butterflies and a very nice view of a resting Ulysses butterfly
This is a different butterfly I spotted on another day, called a Varied Eggfly (also called a Common Eggfly). The wings have attractive colours. The butterfly in this photo is a female one, which is different than the males by their wing patterns and colours.
This is a close-up of the Varied Eggfly butterfly.
This is the same Varied Eggfly butterfly, now resting on a brick wall.
The same Varied Eggfly butterfly, now resting under some leaves.
