Metamorphosis: Caterpillar To Pupa

At The Right Place And Right Time

This was totally unanticipated. Last week, I was lucky enough to witness a caterpillar morphing into a pupa. It was only by chance that I saw this happening. Lucky me for being at the right place and the right time when this happened.

I have been keeping tabs on this particular caterpillar for a couple of days prior. In fact, just an hour or so earlier, it still looked very much like a caterpillar. And all of a sudden about 30 minutes later, it began changing into something different - a pupa.

Here is my account of what transpired.

This is how the caterpillar looked like a day earlier 14th March 2016. Except for the white patches on the sides, it looked very much like any other Tawny Coster caterpillar during its earlier stages after hatching. This photo was taken at 9:37 A.M. on 15th March 2016. Still looking very much like how it was the day before, except that the white patches have grown larger.

A Mature Tawny Coster

The picture on the left was taken in the morning 2 days ago (do click to enlarge). It is a Tawny Coster butterfly. Over the last couple of days I have noticed the presence of this butterfly in my front garden. Its point of interest: my Damiana plants (it appears to be in egg laying mode). To my knowledge, its caterpillars only feed on the Damiana leaves.

This picture was taken while, as it appears to me, to be resting on a dead branch under the strong mid-morning sun. A little unusual as butterflies will only do this in the cool early mornings. It did fly away when approached but it settled down after awhile probably because it was tired after laying eggs. I think the underside of its wings looks a little worn. As a mature female butterfly, it is probably close to the end of its life-cycle.

I wonder if this is the same butterfly as the one that I observed in February 2016? I am no butterfly expert so it is hard to tell. Do they have distinguish markings or features from each other as us humans do? I wonder.

My First Google OAuth2 Python Program

Below is the code for my first Google OAuth2 Python program. The last time I had a look at it was something like 6 months ago - that long already? As I recall, the sample script file blogger.py that was bundled in 'google-api-python-client-samples-1.2.zip', if I am not mistaken, by Google didn't work. I had to debug it myself to get it working.

What this program does is to print out the user's Google login name, the list of blogs at Blogger.com that is associated with this account and the list of blog entries for each blog. The OAuth2 login credentials is named 'plus.dat' and it must be located in the same directory as this Python script file.

I ran this script file under Python 2.4 with some customisation made to the Google API Python Client Library Version 1.2.

I hope somebody will find this useful.

The Source Code

A 'Newborn' Tawney Coster Butterfly

Perhaps I should have waited a little longer. Perhaps I should have hung around for another 30 minutes. But I didn't. The afternoon tropical heat was just unbearable. And I do have an umbrella with me at that time, by the way. So what happened is that I missed the chance of observing this butterfly, a Tawny Coster, taking flight for the first time since breaking out from its pupa.

The picture above is of the said butterfly taken at around high noon. I think the hind-wings will turn more orangy in colour as it dries, much like the fore-wings in this picture. At least that is how a Tawny Coster butterfly that I know of looks like.

Google Is Shutting Down PicasaWeb

My Oh My. After put in so much time and effort into integrating Picasa and OAuth2 into RavenPlus, Google has now announced that it is shutting down PicasaWeb. May 1 2016 is the date to look out for as that is when Google will start rolling out the changes.

I have had a look at the PicasaWeb API developer page and it seems that pictures uploads via RavenPlus should work as what we have now in version 1.0.507. This is what the notice in this page says:

Looks okay to me. But who knows, Google has pulled the rug from right under our feet before.

Process Flow Diagram For Picture Uploads

Going through the source code of a software application that was written by someone else is never easy. One could easily get lost and confused tracking through the code.

I can still remember the first time when I looked at the source code of Zoundry Raven. I couldn't make head or tail of what I was looking at then. But I persevered.

Tracking The Flow

Having a map of the process flow of the various components of Raven/RavenPlus would be handy. But unfortunately, there was none. The only option left for me then is to draw one myself.

RavenPlus Version 1.0.507 - Picture Uploads To PicasaWeb Via OAuth2

I know some of you have been waiting for this. So here it is: RavenPlus version 1.0.507, which contains the fix for uploading pictures to PicasaWeb via the Google OAuth2 protocol.

I have been testing this version out for over the last couple of weeks and I believe I have a stable version that is fit for release. Pictures in my last 3 blog postings (totalling 17 in all) were uploaded to PicasaWeb with this version and I did not notice anything out of the ordinary. They all went through smoothly as far as I could tell. Even my edited pictures were detected by RavenPlus and they got updated on PicasaWeb when I subsequently republish my blog post.

Not tested though is video uploads to PicasaWeb - simply because I do not have the bandwidth nor any videos to share.

If you do not upload pictures to PicasaWeb, you can safely ignore this version.

Version 1.0.507 only works for existing users of Raven and RavenPlus. New users will have to wait a little while as I haven't started work on making a clean import of blogs hosted on Google's Blogger/Blogspot yet. That's next on the to-do list.

Getting Sharp Macro Butterfly Pictures

I was taken aback by the 2 photos above when I first viewed it on my computer. I was not expecting to see such sharp images, clear enough to see the finer details on the butterfly (do click on the pictures to enlarge). And the colours, they are just spectacular - totally unanticipated. The only editing that I did on these two photos was to crop and resize them, nothing else.

Previous Attempts

Compare the 2 pictures above with the one below, a picture that I took about a year ago. I think you will agree that this photo is less striking. A little over exposed, I think.

Tiny Mushrooms

If there is no moisture, there will be no mushroom. With the onset of the year-end North-East monsoon, where it rains almost every day, little tiny mushrooms started to appear here and there around my front garden. The top part of these mushrooms, its cap, measures about an inch across; its height, no more than three inches. These mushrooms will start to dry up after about 24 hours. I don't think these mushrooms are edible - there's not much to chew on even if it is.

Here are some macros (closeups) that I have taken one fine morning towards the end of October. If you enjoy looking at the finer details, like I do, just click on the pictures to enlarge.

Spotted Doves Fighting

I suppose this must be a yearly affair. I remember there was one last year, if I am not mistaken. I theorise that this is to determine the pecking order of the Spotted Dove community. There were 5 of them within the boundaries of my house on my last count just the other day.

I initially thought that this was the courtship ritual of Spotted Doves. But on closer observation (I recorded a couple of videos, by the way), it appears more like a pair of, presumably male, Spotted Doves fighting. The first encounter was on 20th November 2015. Two more encounters were to follow after that, spanning over a total of three days. They clashed on the ground, on the roof of my front porch and also within the branches of my mango tree. I particularly like the encounter within the mango tree, with all that branch to branch jumping and all. I am unsure if there were the same pair over those three days though.

The objective it seems is for the Doves to attempt to stand on the opponent's back. If that fails, then, to wrap its wing over the opponents body. I don't think there was any pecking involved. I didn't see any in my recorded videos.

Mounting an attack could be either head-on, broadside or from behind if one is at such positioning following an earlier attack. There is a lot of wing fluttering during the fight. Lots of jumping with the help of their wings too to gain some extra height. A feather or two may be lost during an attack.

The fight ends when one bird walks calmly away from the confrontation with the other bird (the victor?) following behind, head bowing and cooing at the same time at the retreating bird as if to taunt it. In one of my videos, the two birds actually perched together, separated by about 6 inches between them, after the fight. No bird appears to be injured nor were any bloodied either. Very civilised I think.

Some Additional Pictures

Below are some pictures that I have taken on the first day of this encounter mentioned above. The pictures were all taken within 5 minutes with my Nikon compact camera set to 'Sports' mode. All I did was to focus and hold the shutter-release button down with my forefinger for a couple of seconds to capture a sequence of continuous shots (not really continuous actually as at 16 MP each shot takes about 0.7 or 0.8 of a second to complete).

This fight ended, by the way, when I was too close for the birds' comfort. They just flew away.