Plum-headed Parakeet

On a rainy day I saw this female Plum-headed Parakeet (Psittacula cyanocephala) perched on a slender branch. I was standing very close to the tree. If you are in such a situation then the photos will come out like what I have here today. It shows that you have shot them from a lower angle. When you photograph any animal, it is advisable to be at the eye level of your subject to produce a better perspective. For birds which are perched high up on the tree, it is difficult to follow that principle. Here is a trick I usually follow. Go away from the bottom of the tree the bird is perched, so that you are around 45 to 60 ° angle from the bird. By using long telephoto lenses the photos you take will look as though taken at the eye level. Telephoto lenses have two distinct advantages. They allow higher magnification of the subject as well as they compresses the perceived depth in the photo. So the subject looks far closer than it actually is. This compression fools our eyes that we feel that we are almost near the eye level of the subject. Unfortunately in my case when I left the tree to photograph from that angle parakeet flew away and I was not able to get the view I wanted.

Plum-headed Parakeet

That day I got the overcast white cloudy sky as the background. Metering is tricky in such a situation. If you are using Matrix metering then your camera meter is going to evaluate all the areas in your photograph. Since the sky is brighter than your subject, it will under expose the subject while exposing sky correctly. These are the times when you need to override the meter. You use the exposure compensation setting and dial in exposure shift as you want.

Rule of thumb in overriding meter is as follows.

• If your overall image is whiter than grey, then over-expose from the meter reading.
• If your overall image is darker than grey then under-expose from the meter reading.

How far you need to override meter depends on the brightness or darkness of the scene you are shooting. Spot metering is another option which is better than Matrix metering in such situations. Spot metering usually measures the center 3% of the screen and if you put your subject there and meter you get accurate meter reading of the subject. This allows you to avoid pitfalls of matrix metering.

Plum-headed Parakeet

The Plum-headed Parakeet is a mainly green parrot, The male’s head is red, becoming purple-blue on the back of the crown, nape and cheeks. There is a narrow black neck collar and a black chin stripe. There is a red shoulder patch and the rump and tail are bluish-green, the latter tipped white. The upper mandible is orangish-yellow, and the lower mandible is dark.

The female has a grey head, corn-yellow upper-mandible and lacks the black neck collar, chin stripe and red shoulder patch. Immature birds have a green head and both mandibles are yellowish. The different head colour and the white tip to the tail distinguish this species from the similar Blossom-headed Parakeet (Psittacula roseata). The Plum-headed Parakeet is a gregarious and noisy species with range of raucous calls. The usual flight and contact call is oink? repeated now and then. The Plum-headed Parakeet is a bird of forest and open woodland.

Plum-headed Parakeet

Female Common Picture Wing Dragonfly

This is a colorful golden yellow and brown winged dragonfly which can easily be mistaken for a butterfly from far away. I found it on one afternoon perched on a dry twig fluttering its wings to a strong breeze. It is female Common Picture Wing Dragonfly(Rhyothemis variegata), also called Variegated Flutterer. I was using my Canon EOS 1D Mark IV with Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM + Canon EF 1.4x III Extender.

Female Common Picture Wing Dragonfly in B&W

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes” said Oscar Wilde. As I was engrossed catching as many poses of this beauty in that breeze I missed the loose release plate on my mono-pod head. After the dragonfly flew away I got up and raised my heavy rig which was hosted on my carbon fiber mono-pod to my shoulder in search of my next model. Suddenly I heard a big thud behind my back. When I tuned around to my horror, I saw my camera had come loose from the mono-pod head and fell straight down from my shoulder almost 5feet to a granite stone slab underneath. My 1D mark IV magnesium body shell had taken all the impact. The hot shoe area was bent and top housing was broken. I tried using the camera and it seemed to be working. Luckily 300mm lens as well as 1.4x extender had sustained no damage whatsoever. Now my recently acquired 1D mark IV is in Canon service center getting repaired.

It had been a horrifying experience / mistake. Not checking the tightness of the release plate especially when I am loading it with such a lot of weight was my mistake. I might have inadvertently loosened the release plate when using the ball head. But that simple mistake had cost me big. This experience has taught me a great lesson to check & recheck all my equipment for good working condition as well as security. I am planning to fit the camera an extra secure mechanism which will hold it in case of such inadvertent slippage. I have also purchased a different mono-pod head which has a detente pin for extra security.

Female Common Picture Wing Dragonfly

Male common picture wing dragonfly has iridescent green frons. Eyes are dark reddish brown above. Thorax is iridescent green. Legs are black. The fore-wing is transparent and golden yellow. The wing tip, leading edge and center of the wing are marked with deep coffee brown spots. The hind-wing also has similar spots; however the central spot is absent. More over, the wing base is marked with an irregular brown patch. The trailing edge of the hind-wing has a characteristic ‘w’ shaped coffee brown mark. Wing spot and abdomen is black.

Female common picture wing dragonfly is slightly smaller than male. Eyes are dark reddish brown above. Tips of the fore-wings are transparent. A dark brown opaque area extends to the center of fore wing. This area borders a bright yellow hockey stick shaped patch. In hind-wings the brown opaque area is more extensive and reaches up to the wing tip, which encloses a long yellow central patch and a small yellow spot towards the wing tip. This patch also borders yellow spots of wing margins. Wing spot is black. Abdomen is bluish black.

Female Common Picture Wing Dragonfly

It is a prominent dragonfly of marshes, paddy fields and ponds. This species is easily mistaken for a butterfly. A weak flier and frequently perches on aquatic weeds. This dragonfly is rarely seen away from water. It breeds in marshes, ponds and paddy fields. Found throughout the year, especially near perennial marshes.

Mating Common Mormons

Monsoon rain was lashing heavily that day. That morning when there was a brief respite from the rain, I went home to grab a quick cup of coffee, I saw these Common Mormon (Papilio polytes) mating on the citrus plant. Leaving the coffee aside I grabbed my camera and rushed to get these photos. The place where these butterflies were mating was a tricky one. It was on a precarious ledge so I had very little space to maneuver myself. They were hanging from a bush which had only one clear opening, rest of the surrounding was covered by leaves. Light was pretty abysmal. As I had sold my 5D Mark II that time I had only one camera. I fitted my Canon EOS 1D Mark IV with Canon EF 100 f/2.8L IS USM. For the light I used ExpoImaging Ray Flash Adapter on Canon Speedlite 580EX II flash.

The female Common Mormon was hanging from the citrus leaf and male was attached to the female. Weight of the both these butterflies was carried by female. Even though I was not expecting them to fly off in that position I did not want to disturb their coitus. Using the only window of opening I had, I tried to take photograph before the rain resumed.

Mating Common Mormons

At the first sight both butterflies look so dissimilar. That is because the female Common Mormon is mimicking the Crimson Rose (Atrophaneura hector) butterfly. Common Mormons are not toxic but by mimicking the toxic butterfly they escape being eaten by birds which mistake them for Crimson Rose.

Henry Walter Bates, determined that these multi-morph females are mimicking other butterflies. In the areas where the Mormons occur, there are other species of butterflies that look like one or another morph of the Mormon females. These other species feed on toxic plants such as Aristolocia, which renders them unpalatable to predators. The Mormon females, which are palatable, mimic the unpalatable model thus gaining protection from predators that mistake them for the other bad tasting species. This type of mimicry has become known as Batesian mimicry in honor of Bates who first described it in 1862.

Male Common Mormon

The male has one morph only. It is a dark-coloured swallow-tailed butterfly. The upper forewing has a series of white spots decreasing in size towards the apex. The upper hindwing has a complete discal band of elongated white spots. It may or may not have marginal red crescents. The males are smaller in size than the females.

The female of the Common Mormon is polymorphic. In South Asia, it has three forms or morphs. These are as follows:

• Form romulus: This female form mimics the Crimson Rose and is common over its range. It is not such a close mimic as the previous form being duller than its model, the Crimson Rose. It is easy to differentiate the mimics from models by the color of their body—the models are red-bodied and the mimics are black-bodied. This is the form you are seeing in these photographs.
• Form cyrus: This form is similar to the male, differing in that it always has strongly marked red crescents. It is the least common of the three forms. It is normally abundant where the Common Rose or Crimson Rose do not occur, such as in Himachal Pradesh around Shimla.
• Form stichius: This female form of the Common Mormon mimics the Common Rose very closely. This is the commonest form wherever the Common Rose flies.

Closeup of female Common Mormon

Common Mormon butterfly is considered as the classic example of Batesian Mimicry in which edible species resemble unpalatable butterflies in order to escape being eaten by predators. The populations of the mimicking morphs of the Common Mormon are much smaller than that of their models – the Common or Crimson Rose. This is in order to allow first time predators a much greater chance of preying upon the unpalatable model in the first instance and thus learning of their in-edibility.

Larger populations of mimics could result in the edible Common Mormon mimics being sampled the first time by predators. If this should happen, the predator may not realize that butterflies of that color and pattern are protected by the poisons they ingest; thus dramatically reducing the effectiveness of this scheme of protection.

Mating Common Mormons

If you are wondering how these butterflies got their name, here is an interesting fact. Harish Gaonkar, of the Natural History Museum in London, recently wrote

the origins of giving common English names to organisms, particularly butterflies for tropical species started in India around the mid 19th century.The naming of Mormons evolved slowly. I think the first to get such a name was the Common Mormon (Papilio polytes), because it had three different females, a fact that could only have been observed in the field, and this they did in India. The name obviously reflected the Mormon sect in America, which as we know, practiced polygamy.