Animal and Insect life in our Garden

Few days of rain and few open sunny days put the dead garden back in to life once again. This year summer was hard on plants. We decided to water only trees or those plants that can tolerate the heat and survive so many of our flower plants and food plants for butterflies died this summer but monsoon brought them back.

In the morning small Gulmohar, Yellow Elder and Zinia attracts Lime and Common Crow Butteflies. Few days back there were lots of Common Rose and Crimson Rose in the garden but none since last three days. Tridax attracts all the small size butterflies but surprisingly no grass yellows seen so far. All three kind of Parakeet visits the garden but different times. Plum Headed and Alexandrine come for Guava's in winter, than only Plum Headed comes for Mangoes when unripe and hard and once they are ripen than Rose Ringed Parakeet comes to finish them.

We have Dussehari (10 trees), Chaunsa (9 trees) & three trees of desi mangoes. Other animal that we have as a resident / visitor to the garden is a family of Indian Palm Civet. Now they are all adult in size and devouring the Mango, Guava, Papaya and Cheeku in the night. We see their poo every where in the morning. They comes to our Veranda. Here they poo every where may be because of cats. They just wants to to leave their scent mark on top of theirs.

It was great fun photographing them. Few years back I photographed them eating Mango and Guava. Our nieces Munmun and Mahi love watching them in the night. Sometimes these Civets ignore them completely. Once a female brought a big mango and started eating it about a feet away from Munmun's feet.

Crows are the other birds who always knows before us that which mango is ripened. They bring it down on ground then beetles and butterflies start enjoying it. After few showers of rain Mango's start getting bugs inside. This is because a moth lays its eggs in them.

This morning Common Crow, Great Eggfly and Lemon Pansy are seen feeding on ripen mango on ground.