Male Loten's Sunbird with spider in its mouth

I found this male Loten’s Sunbird in my garden the other day with spider in its mouth. The Loten’s Sunbird or Long-billed Sunbird, Cinnyris lotenius (formerly placed in the genus Nectarinia), is one of a group of very small Old World passerine birds which feed largely on nectar. Sunbirds will also take insects, especially when feeding young and Loten’s Sunbird is possibly more insectivorous than other sympatric species. Their flight is fast and direct on their short wings.

Male Loten's Sunbird

Long bill separates this from the sympatric Purple Sunbird. The wings are browner and the maroon breast band is visible on the male under good lighting. The call is distinctive and they are also very active often bobbing their head while foraging.

The song of the male is a long repeated wue-wue-wue… with the last notes accelerated. The males may sing from the tops of bare trees or telegraph wires. Loten’s Sunbird is a resident breeder that is locally common in forest and cultivation in India and Sri Lanka. Two eggs are laid in a suspended nest in a tree. The bag of webs, bark and caterpillar frass.

Loten’s Sunbirds are small, only 12-13 cm long. They have long down-curved bills and brush-tipped tubular tongues, both adaptations to their nectar feeding. The bill lengths vary across populations with long bills found on the east of Peninsular India and in Sri Lanka.

The adult male is mainly glossy purple with a grey-brown belly. It is similar to Purple Sunbird, but is larger, has a longer sickle-shaped bill, and a different belly colour.

The eclipse male has yellow-grey upperparts, darker than Purple Sunbird, and a yellow breast with a blue central streak extending to the belly. The existence of an eclipse plumage in the adult male has however been questioned. The female has yellow-grey upperparts and yellowish underparts, but lacks Purple’s faint supercilium. The call is a buzzy zwick zwick.

Found only in peninsular India and Sri Lanka. The main region is along the Western Ghats and into the southern peninsula. There are scattered records from central India and into the northern Eastern Ghats near Orissa. Race hindustanicus is found in India while the nominate race is found in Sri Lanka.

Female Oriental Garden Lizard

This Female Oriental Garden Lizard (Calotes versicolor) was photographed using Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM & 24mm extension tube set.
It is an agamid lizard found widely distributed in Asia. It has also been introduced in many parts other parts of the world. It is an insectivore and the male gets a bright red throat in the breeding season leading to a incorrect name of Bloodsucker. These lizards can change their colours, quite rapidly, but not as rapidly as chameleons.

Oriental Garden Lizard also known as Changeable Lizards are usually a dull brown, grey or olive with speckles or bands, but can can be seen in other colours such as bright green. These colour changes may reflect their moods. During the breeding season, the male’s head and shoulders turns bright orange to crimson and his throat black. Males also turn red-headed after a successful battle with rivals. Thus their other gruesome name of “Bloodsucker Lizard”. But they don’t actually suck anybody’s blood! Both males and females have a crest from the head to nearly the tail, hence their other common name “Crested Tree Lizard”.

Changeable Lizards are related to iguanas (which are found only in the New World). Unlike other lizards, they do not drop their tails (autotomy), and their tails can be very long, stiff and pointy. Like other reptiles, they shed their skins. Like chameleons, Changeable Lizards can move each of their eyes in different directions.

Changeable Lizards eat mainly insects and small vertebrates, including rodents and other lizards. Although they have teeth, these are designed for gripping prey and not tearing it up. So prey is swallowed whole, after it is stunned by shaking it about. Sometimes, young inexperienced Changeable Lizards may choke on prey which are too large. They are commonly found among the undergrowth in open habitats including highly urban areas. The lizards were introduced to Singapore from Malaysia and Thailand in the 1980s.

Breeding: Males become highly territorial during breeding season. They discourage intruding males by brightening their red heads and doing “push-ups”. Each tries to attract a female by inflating his throat and drawing attention to his handsomely coloured head. About 10-20 eggs are laid, buried in moist soil. The eggs are long, spinde-shaped and covered with a leathery skin. They hatch in about 6-7 weeks. They are able to breed at about 1 year old.

Role in the habitat: Changeable Lizards control the population of their prey. In turn, they are food for predators higher up in the food chain.

Status and threats: The Changeable Lizard is relatively common and found in a wide range of habitats. They appear to adapt well to humans and are thus not endangered.

Plain Tiger

I used Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM with 36mm of extension tube to shoot this Plain Tiger butterfly only very cloudy evening.

The Plain Tiger is a medium sized butterfly with a wingspan of about 7–8 cm. The body is black with many white spots. The wings are tawny the upper side being brighter and richer than the underside. The apical half of the fore wing is black with a white band. The hind wing has 3 black spots around the center. The hind wing has a thin border of black enclosing a series of semicircular white spots.

Background color and extent of white on the forewings varies somewhat across the wide range.

The male Plain Tiger is smaller than the female, but more brightly colored. In addition, male danaines have a number of secondary sexual characteristics. In the case of the Plain Tiger, these are:

• The male has a pouch on the hindwing. This spot is white with a thick black border and bulges slightly. It is a cluster of specialised scent scales used to attract females.
• The males possess two brush-like organs which can be pushed out of the tip of the abdomen

The range of the Plain Tiger extends from Africa and southern Europe, eastwards via Sri Lanka, India, and Myanmar to China and Sulawesi. It is a very common species.
Despite the external similarity, the Common Tiger is not closely related to this species.

Danaus chrysippus chrysippus mud-puddling in Hyderabad, India.

It is found in every kind of country including the desert (pending availability of food) and right up into the mountains till 9000 feet. Primarily a butterfly of open country and gardens. Unlike the Common Tiger, a related species, is least common in damp, forested, hilly regions. It is a somewhat migratory species.

This butterfly is perhaps the commonest of Indian butterflies and is a familiar sight to practically everyone on the subcontinent. It flies from dawn to dusk, frequenting gardens, sipping from flowers and, late in the day, fluttering low over bushes to find a resting place for the night.

As usual for diurnal butterflies, this species rests with its wings closed. When basking it sits close to the ground and spreads its wings with its back to the sun so that the wings are fully exposed to the sun’s rays.

The Plain Tiger is protected from attacks due to the unpalatable alkaloids ingested during the larval stages. The butterfly therefore flies slowly and leisurely, generally close to the ground and in a straight line. This gives a would-be predator ample time to recognise and avoid attacking it. Inexperienced predators will try attacking it, but will learn soon enough to avoid this butterfly as the alkoloids in its body cause vomiting.

The butterfly also has a tough, leathery skin to survive such occasional attacks. When attacked it fakes death and oozes nauseating liquid which makes it smell and taste terrible. This encourages the predator to release the butterfly quickly. The Plain Tiger thus has the ability to recover “miraculously” from predator attacks that would kill most other butterflies.

The protection mechanisms of the Plain Tiger, as of the other danaines, and indeed of all colorful unpalatable butterflies, result in predators learning this memorable aspect at first hand. Predators soon associate the patterns and habits of such butterfly species with unpalatability to avoid hunting them in future.

This advantage of protection has led to a number of edible butterfly species, referred to as “mimics”, evolving to resemble inedible butterflies, which are referred to as the “model”. The resemblance is not only in color, shapes, and markings, but also in behavioural and flight patterns. This form of mimicry – where an edible species mimics an inedible species – is known as Batesian mimicry.

The mimics can resemble the models very closely. In some cases, it requires examination in hand and reference to field guides to tell them apart. The Plain Tiger is specifically mimicked by the following butterflies:

• Indian Fritillary (Argyreus hyperbius) females
• Danaid Eggfly (Hypolimnas misippus forma inaria females.

The following butterflies have a general resemblance common to both the Plain Tiger and the Common Tiger:

• Leopard Lacewing (Cethosia cyane) males and females
• Indian Tamil Lacewing (Cethosia nietneri mahratta) males and females
• Common Palmfly (Elymnias hypermnestra) females

The similarity between the Plain and Common Tigers makes them Müllerian mimics, as the adverse experience a predator makes with either species will also protect the other.