Butterfly in search of food….

Hi there…

I thought this would be a good little documentary on how a butterfly got access to nectar in a flower that have yet to bloom. This is a short series of photos taken back in one of the local parks. Its a plain tiger butterfly.
Here are the photos.
1- The butterfly identify the flower that its going to work on. It looked around to make sure there are no predators like spiders.
Normally spiders will be hiding below these flowers to pounce on the butterflies as they feed.

2- The butterfly uses its two tiny little claws to severe the surface of the petal of the closed flower. It randomly make little slits
that slowly opens up little holes for it to gain access to the nectar within.

3- The holes were created on both sides in this case probably with both the two front legs. Once the holes were made, they then slowly stick out their long straw into the flower to take in the nectar.

Well, it rather interesting that at this particular time & weather, there wasn’t many flower of the same type blooming nearby. There were a few new buds only on the bush.
The butterfly put such great effort to actually scratch its way with the little claws at the ends of its legs. Its a really an interesting sight.
Well, hope this short documentary adds on to your knowledge bank.

Regards,
Sulhan

Perseid meteor shower – 13 Aug 2009 (Melbourne Point of View)

Hi Everyone,

I was awakened at 4:30am today about 30mins ahead of my typical start of the day. Did the usual jingles and then checked out the web and realized that theres gonna be a meteor shower NOW!!! It was 4:45am on the microwave. I looked out and there were full of cloud cover as I stared out of my bedroom window. And hei!!! amazingly as I talked to myself, its really clearing. The clouds we clearing right at the peak of the meteor shower. Yes breaking an opening as the minute ticks from 4:45am. Well i guess HE wants me to check it out as I remembered 10yrs back, in Brisbane, I was stalking out at 2am in the morning up on the hills near Baynes street with a couple of house mates trying to view the same meteor shower but …none.

Well, thankfully, I manage to quickly grab my fish-eye and my camera all propped up outside the back door and got ready. The shoot setup was:
- DSLR on tripod
- 16mm f2.8 @ f2.8 & f4
- ISO 400
- Cable release

I had to do a few cycles of 30 secs shots as Its was rather unpredictable and its hard to see the actual regions where the meteors would be visible as the moon was really bright (1/2 moon tonight).
Here are the fruit of the labour for the morning:

This image below captured the longest streak.

Here is the cropped of the meteor for the above photo.

Original Image downloadable here:4589

Here is the cropped of the meteor for the above photo.

Original Image downloadable here: 4582

This bottom photograph was taken at 511sec (8.5mins)

Here is the cropped of the meteor for the above photo.

Original Image downloadable here:4579

The Moon light is making the meteor streaks not easy to detect. Streaks found upon analysis of downloaded image.
If we observe the three shots, the meteor line streaks are polarized to the same direction. Therefore, they might have been from the same meteor shower. Well, its worth an effort for the setup this morning. Finally I have some meteor shots to share with my daughter Aisyah. And she just got off my lap a minute ago as she came to say good morning to me and I showed her the photos.

Have a great photo-taking weekend ahead.

Regards,
Sulhan