Back in the Undergrowth.

Hey ya'll!!

So I decided to make the most out of a bad situation and - seeing as to how it's probably not going to be there anymore once the construction crew is done with it - I vowed to treasure every second the 'forest area' still stands and make as many trips there as my time will allow. Of course, some sense of this urgency could also be attributed to a long-delayed project of mine to make a complete and working guide to the butterfly species which can be found here (something I've been putting off 'tomorrow' which could have been done over the span of countless 'todays') and seeing as to how the insects are probably going to relocate themselves during the construction (I'm not quite worried about their species survival as I have seen them in other localities around the Sunway area... just not quite all concentrated in one area) I decided to take the entire morning off to go in and catch what specimens I can find to add to that particular chapter of my field journal on the butterflies which continue to inhabit pockets of spaces in the urbanscape. Yesterday when I went, it was not exactly good weather so there weren't that many butterflies which were out and about. But today, with the sun shining, the sky, a fierce shade of blue, smeared here and there with the wisps of clouds, I was quite confident. True enough, the butterflies were all about, looking - for a lack of a more creative description - like flying flowers, or bits of colored tissue, doing their silly little 'dances' in the wind.

Maybe it was the effects of the glaring sun... or something to that end, but the butterflies seemed extra lively, extra acrobatic and extra fast today! Really, it took me more than half an hour to just net these two specimens. 

Another male of the common eggfly (Hypolimnas bolina) with impeccable blue tinge on the upperside of his wings.

And the elusive painted jezebel (Delias hyparete) which I truly think to be one of the more beautiful and exquisite of butterflies which can be found around here. 

But, as the sun drew out the butterflies, it seemed to have drawn out a host of other insects as well. Bush crickets, grasshoppers, froghoppers, cicadas and the like, but also those of a more annoying variety. Scores of mosquitoes. Clouds of them! Literal clouds, like dense insect storms over patches of brush and undergrowth, no doubt breeding the immense man-made lake nearby, and alas, even I - dressed in my long sleeves and pants for this occasion - did not manage to walk out of there unscathed.

My heart's a stereo,
it beats for you so listen close!