It is a great way to spend a lazy day walking around the park and taking in its beauty, partly because the more you are looking out for one thing, the more you discover by accident lots of other natural wonders of the park. While looking for butterflies, I was also lucky enough to watch a kingfisher take a fish from the river. I later learned from a bird watcher who was visiting Ba Ba purely to look for rare birds that there are seven different species of Kingfisher here - who knew?! The one I saw was a Common Kingfisher, and I have also seen a White Throated Kingfisher. Sadly the photos I have of them are not much good as I had to use a very high zoom and did not have a steady enough hand.
The bird watcher was here to try to find a White Eared Night Heron. This is a rare bird and Ba Be is one of very few places in the world that it can be found. Sadly, he didn’t get a chance to see one, but I’m hoping to spot one while I am here.
Anyway, back to butterflies! I got a few great photos of both butterflies and interesting looking caterpillars. Some research turned up one or two of the species, but I was not able to find out the types of all of them - any pointers in the comments would be very welcome!
This is a Yellow Jezebel, a spectacularly coloured species from the Pieridae family. You can also find White Jezebels here in Ba Be.
This is a Grey Pansy (Junonia Atlites). I spotted this one while I was cycling through the park and it came to land on my bicycle.
I also took these shots of two butterflies and two caterpillars (which will presumably be butterflies one day), but I wasn’t able to find their names.
This is becoming a bit of an obsession for me now - I may well post some updates as my new butterfly spotting hobby progresses!