The weather had been bone dry for the past few weeks, so my expectations were not very high that day. nevertheless, that day was significant as it was the day I tested my new diffuser, which up to now, remains my top design. So without further ado, back to insects.
Before I left the house where I had dinner, I checked the garage, and sure enough, a tiny 4mm Bathroom Moth fly was resting on one of the walls.
Not seeing anything else, I began the trek to ‘The Hill’, a spot previously mentioned in my first blog. The vegetation on the sides of the road was dying, and I did not manage to find any of the usual chafer beetles or spiders on the way there. When I finally reached the hill, a commonly encountered Rhesala moth greeted me at the wall of now not-so-lush looking tapioca and melastoma plants.
Due to the dry weather, there were only a few of these Adoretus compressus chafer beetles, as expected.
A cute little skipper was resting on a leaf of a small lantana plant. At this point, my DIY diffuser suddenly fell off, and it knocked the branch of the bush the butterfly was sleeping on. The butterfly promptly flew a short distance and rested on my diffuser! Note the difference between the diffused and undiffused photograph of this butterfly.
Even the odorous ants were hard to come across. After some searching, I finally found one of them on a leaf of an unidentified short tree.
The last insect encountered for the night was another chafer beetle.
As expected, the number of insects encountered that night was miserable. Nevertheless, I got to test my new diffuser, and its falling off prompted me to modify the design slightly so that would not happen again in the future.
– Joshua Wong
Bonus:
When I had reached home, I spotted a largish ant crawling on the floor of the basement. It turned out to be a trap jaw ant, so I took some photographs of it before heading up to shower and go to bed. It was difficult to get a clear shot, as it kept moving without stopping.
Leave a Reply