click hide image

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The tangled bank

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us...
-Charles Darwin

February 12 is Darwin day, here are some images from a week in just a tiny patch of the Western Ghats.


Polyrhachis illaudata

Ant-like spider

Nygmia sp.

A leaf-hopper

An isopod - a land crustacean hidden under bark


A stilt-legged fly
A mantis
An ichneumon
A spider that looks like a wasp
A moth that looks like moss
A Jungle Nightjar keeps watch
A fly with legs that grab - Ochthera sp.
Polyrhachis gracilior
A small Rhacophorid - Philautus (Raorchestes) sp.
A green one
A Micrixalus rests on a rock in a shaded forest stream

A blue-green scorpion


A spider peers on a maidenhair fern


A Hersilid spider looks on
A southern birdwing flutters
A stalk-eyed fly (Teleopsis sykesii)

A vine snake dines
A moth feeds on fruit (Ischyja sp.)
A bug basks (Cantao ocellata)
A sleepy Malabar pit-viper
A map lies flat
A hornbill cackles
A baby stick insect emerges

A drepanid moth rests

A Limoniid fly

A Lycaenid rests

A plant hopper (probably Nogodinidae) sits on the trunk

An ant-like cricket nymph
A damselfly stalks
A skipper ready to dart

2 comments:

  1. Awesome. Please identify the place for our information.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Actually could well be anywhere along the moister parts of the Western Ghats, but this is a bit from Wynaad, northern Kerala.

    ReplyDelete