happy hoppers

First of all apologies to everyone for yesterdays text. It was meant as a joke at my expense not yours, but I guess I was a bit too convincing in my write-up. I sincerely hope that no one was offended or put out.

There has been a definite change in the grove since the wet season started, apart from the very scary proliferation of mosquitoes. Many of the types of butterfly have disappeared, so it seems that a lot of the insects are seasonal. The TWO butterflies that I blipped yesterday have become quite a rarity, as has the common tiger, the most plentiful butterfly just a few short weeks ago. I am hoping the wet season will bring forth a new batch of different butterflies to keep me going, but it hasn't happened yet. Still plenty of orange darters, yellows and black-n-whites, but I have done those.

The blip monster was not being very friendly today, giving me very little to work with. I collected a few shots of a small wasp with its stinger out, the three types of butterfly mentioned, a fly, eight types of hopper and a lizard. Although they were all blippable, I decided it was about time to feature the hoppers of the grove. There must be at least a dozen different varieties of hopper, probably a lot more. The featured hopper is one of my favorites and will be featured again as it has a cute face, but I still haven't worked out its mouth yet.

Today I was using my new rim light, upping the illumination from 6 to 24 lights (LED's). It worked really well, bringing out the colors of the insects in the murky shadows of the undergrowth, especially the darker colored insects.

I have put one shot of each of the blip choices in a blipfolio folder titled 19-11-2011 for those of you interested.

Dave