Last weekend Carly and I continued our exploring of our province and headed out to a new waterfall and forest park we had never visited (Lampi Waterfall). The park was small but beautiful and each and every corner of it seemed to be home to one or more species of butterfly.

We walked up a path through the jungle in the dappled sunshine towards a large waterfall a flash of silver and orange fluttering just above the path caught my eye. It was only a small butterfly but what it lacked in size it made up for in beauty. When it landed it was truly amazing and it was even nice enough to land close by so that we could snap some shots. (please forgive my manky toes)

After taking some shots of the butterfly and admiring the waterfall we headed off over an old rope bridge into the jungle. As we walked along the path that ran parallel to the waterfall we spotted a small red butterfly resting on the leaf of a bush near the path. Carly stopped to take a photo and then as we looked around we noticed more and more of them. They were a pleasure to look at and provided flashes of red in the predominantly green jungle.

As Carly was snapping some shots of the butterflies I looked around and spotted this cool butterfly in the same tree but a lot further away.

This Horsefields Baron and Common Banded Demon also landed on a bush close by as we were taking pictures.

After a while we headed back down the path towards the park entrance on the other side of the river. We came to an opening in the jungle and on the fringes there was a flowering bush that had attracted this Large Snow Flat Butterfly.

After a while the mosquitos had stepped up their attack and despite being smothered in ample amounts of repellent  they were biting us more and more. We decided to leave the jungle and head back to the car park where it was sunnier and there weren’t as many mosquitos.

Looking off across the car park we could see that there was a lot of butterfly activity and we headed to an area where there were a lot of yellow butterflies. As we got closer we realised that the yellow group was actually more diverse than it seemed at first.

 

We walked around the car park for a while and then suddenly we hit the jackpot. We came across an area where lots of fruit had fallen out of a tree and was rotting on the sandy floor below. The rotting fruit had attracted lots of butterflies and as an extra bonus they were so preoccupied with the fruit that you could actually touch them without them moving. Carly and I must have been there for half and hour or more, and with such perfect subjects for our pictures we managed to snap a few nice shots.

All in all a great weekend for butterflies and I also spotted many more new butterflies outside of the park which you can see here Butterflies