Dudu Diaries

Category: Butterflies | Date: Dec 29 2007 | By: admin

First – sorry to my fellow insect-lovers for not posting on the blog for a while. I’ve been in Boston at university and as the winter progressed, both insects, and time to blog, was very limited. I’m glad to report that I’m back in Kenya (briefly!) and have been visiting Kakamega forest for the past few days… which by the way is one of my favourite places in the world and one of Kenya’s most diverse forests.

The forest has been very dry (it last rained about two weeks ago), so it is very different walking through the crackling dry leaf litter and the absence of mud – in the rainforest! – is striking. Nonetheless there are lots of insects around as usual the hot dry weather seems to have had an effect on certain kinds of butterflies who are more abundant than usual.

I was walking down a path at the edge of the Yala River. This area of forest is one of the few virgin fragments in the sprawling Kakamega rainforest, much of which has been disturbed in the past and/or is currently heavily utilised. But along the banks of the Yala River, deep inside the forest are patches of relatively undisturbed forest home to some of Kenya’s loveliest butterflies.

Among the many forest beauties flitting about in the sunspots and by the streams was one very striking and gorgeous iridescent species known as the Blue Mother-Of-Pearl. The edge of the river was bathed in hot sunshine and the butterflies lazily fluttered about. They moved over the sandy soil pressing their proboscises against the wet ground imbibing salts that are leaching upwards through evaporation. This behaviour is known as mud-puddling and it is primarily done by male butterflies in search of precious salts that they will present as a nuptial gift to a female butterfly as part of a spermatophore – a special package of nutrients – when they mate.

Sometimes when many butterflies have gathered, they will often be quite relaxed, and if approached slowly will not startle. One favourite game that I love to play with large numbers of mud-puddling butterflies is to try and get them to climb onto my hand. Be pressing one’s hand into the damp earth before and gently and very, very slowly moving it under a butterfly, you can occasionally get one of them to climb onto you. (Sweat works just as well and some butterflies will even try and land on you to drink it!).

I laid down my net and backpack and inched forward slowly. You need to move like a chameleon – just one limb at a time and absolutely no sudden movements. After several false starts that resulted in clouds of colour whirling about my head finally the butterflies began to treat me as part of their surroundings.

Inching forward, I pressed my hand into the cool earth and gently moved it towards the one darker butterfly who was sitting at the edge of the throng. I positioned it underneath her, and without a moment’s hesitation she stepped up onto my palm and began ‘tasting’ my skin with her proboscis.

I watched her as she shuffled over my palm As a breeze wafted over the river, she decided that she needed to warm up and spread her magnificent wings pressing them against my hand to gather as much warmth as possible.

Of course, this lasted barely a moment and I was stunned by the rich colours, but quickly I managed to snap a picture with the camera in my other hand. Despite my adulation for her resplendence, I knew that she would not stay and let me gaze on her beauty long. Once she warmed up within a few seconds she flitted up and away, swirling into the bright, speckled canopy!

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