Mud puddling

Surprising response to yesterday's hopper blip. Made spotlight and made a respectable score too. Hoppers and camo shots tend not to do well, so I was expecting nothing from this combination.

Identification - Junonia atlites - grey pansy.

It rained heavily in the night and was bright and sunny this morning. Perfect conditions for butterfly mud puddling. I waited to start my safari at 08:30, to give the butterflies a chance to warm up and start work.

On this morning's safari, I found two new patches of otter spraint, about 40 meters apart. This was particularly interesting, as I had only ever seen one patch before, perhaps a new male muscling on the territory. May be time for a crack of dawn safari, see if I can pixilate one of them. There were no butterflies mud puddling on the spraint, quite possibly too fresh, I will check the locations again tomorrow.

I found this grey pansy puddling on the path. These butterflies are usually a bit flitty, but they are always more tolerant when puddling and I was able to shuffle up to within a foot.

There have been a few studies on mud puddling and the general census was that it was young males that partook of the pleasure. But I just read Boggs and Jackson (1991) and they noted that the trend was young males and old females. The study was species specific and of course this result could too be specific.

I myself have not paid that much attention, assuming that what I had read was true, that it was all males, now I have to rethink and try to learn to tell the sexes apart at a glance. I had however, noticed that the quality of the puddlers would suggest young butterflies.

The scientists agreed that sodium was an important element for egg production and fertilization. Boggs and Jackson suggest that young males need sodium before mating and old females require a sodium top-up after laying, which kind of makes sense.

Boggs and Jackson admit that neither they or the other studies bothered to analyze what other nutrients might be sought, after all, two day old otter spraint did seem to be rather popular to me and from the pungent smell, there was a lot more going on than just sodium.

Dave