Lemon Pansy Butterfly

I think it was earlier this year when I tried photographing this butterfly, a Lemon Pansy. I failed despite me chasing it around the front yard from one spot to another for something like an hour under the hot and sunny 11 o'clock morning sun.

But taking the picture above a little over a week ago was a bit unchallenging. The butterfly did flutter about while I was walking around in the backyard. But then when it settled down on a leaf and me approaching it with my camera, it was rather tranquil. Not sure why - perhaps the rather 'cooler' weather has something to do with it during those few days (weather is a bit crazy these days by the way). I did manage to take about 10 closeup shots in the end. My camera was about 1 feet away from the butterfly in all attempts. The lighting was not ideal for my pocket camera though but still the pictures turned out okay.

My Contribution To The 2016 MY Garden Birdwatch Survey

The yearly MY Garden Birdwatch Survey was held this year on the 4th and 5th June 2016. You will find my count results below, which I carried out on Saturday 4th June 2016, between 3:00 PM till 3:30 PM. As in previous years, my counting was done at my home.

Different species of birds seems to appear as different hours. As a consequence, some birds were not counted even though they were seen outside the time bracket of my survey. But I got a surprise though this year: two White-throated Kingfishers made an appearance while I was doing my count. A rather common bird in my neighbourhood but this is actually the first time that they are included in my survey results. They have been quite elusive previously.

We had quite a severe hot and dry weather during the second quarter of this year. Never in my life had I experienced such weather extremes, culminating in heat-waves at times. Some lakes and rivers dried-up and water levels at some dams went down to a critical stage. I wonder if this unusual and unprecedented weather had had any impact on the bird population nationwide? I just can't wait for the results to be released to find out. That's about 2 months away.