Compound wildlife

A few pics from around the compound over the last month or two:

Interesting flowers.

Blue Tiger.

Tree Pie.

Yellow-billed Blue Magpie.  There were some of these nesting behind where the
SWH project is.  When a cat comes along they take it upon themselves to warn
the whole neighbourhood.  And then hound the beast out of the area by dive-
bombing it.

Looks like one of those glow-in-the-dark plastic beasties.

There are lots of young birds fresh from the nest at the moment.  This Indian
Myna hadn't quite worked out what its wings were for yet.  The other day we saw
a couple of adult Black Drongos encouraging their 3 sulky offspring to budge
off the wire they were determinedly clinging to and fly.  With little success.

One of our semi-resident bug catchers.

All that was left of a Common Peacock after some bird had had a large and
tasty snack.

And the underside.  I think I'd like a rug like this.

A beast of a bee.

Now this is a proper sized thistle!

Finally, a not completely blurred pic of a Paradise Flycatcher.
Its love of shady overgrown places combined with its hyper-
active nature do not make it an easy photography subject.
It's fairly amazing to watch hunting, with a fantastic hovering
ability, as you'll see in the 2nd half of the video below.  His
oddly unmatched mate is chestnut-y red and without the tail
streamers, but equally aerobatic.

Another beast of a bee.

Mathematical plants

We've got a nice variety of shapes and patterns out in the
hospital grounds at the moment.

These ones have multiple blooms on a single stalk, arranged in a staggered
manner offset one above the other like parts of a wedding-cake on a stand.

I have no idea why this one gazania (out of dozens like it) had its petals
folded up like this, but looks pretty cool.  (click to see full size)

Fairly special even when closed up for the night.

Less beautiful perhaps, but nonetheless fascinating structure-wise.

Check out the multiple layers of symmetry in this plant - 5 then 3 then...

Sprung is spring!

The last week or two has seen the temperature rise from heaters-always-on, wear-at-least-3-layers to toasty t-shirt weather.  Well, it would be if such garments were appropriate...

The colourful flowers are coming back out...

...the trees are covered in pretty blossom...

...more interesting birds are starting to make appearances...
(doesn't appear in my bird book, but similar in size and shape to a Tree Pie;
it has fantastic stripes on its tail which become visible in flight.)

...the little grassland butterflies return with a vengeance...
(a Dark Clouded Yellow)

...while the big fancy swallowtails have reappeared
(albeit near the tops of the trees to take advantage of
all that blossom nectar).  This is a Common Peacock.

The Roseringed Parakeets didn't go anywhere,
but I finally got close enough with the camera!

Camels, canals and a multitude of cats

We recently spent a week visiting some friends of our down in the Sindh, around 5 hours bus ride out of Karachi. We attended two tribal weddings, which I shall leave to Jenny to describe in all their colourful detail. For now, here's a few pictorial impressions of what it was like there...

It's much drier and dustier in general than up here in the mountains, except for
these brilliant pockets of green where water is diverted from the Indus for irrigation,
via a massive canal network built by the British back in colonial times.

Fancy sharing your living space with this chap?

Lots of pretty flowers around, and saw some brilliant little iridescent
what-may-or-may-not-have-been hummingbirds.

Our friends had four fairly magnificent Himalayan cats (two of which had kittens
on the same day while we were there).  Must be pretty toasty under all that fur!
This one's ginger relative could almost pass for a small lion...

They overload their trucks to an even more comical extent, especially when it's
less dense cargoes such as sugar cane.  Two have trouble passing each other.

We do have occasional camels up near us, but they're much more common here.
This one has a comparatively light load.

We came to Pakistan pretty much assuming we wouldn't get to swim anywhere
while we were here, but we were wrong, this delightful canal being floated down
in style.

Also worthy of note was another magnificent example of Pakistani roadworks, where a huge stretch of highway (1-2 hours drive) was being widened from 2 narrow lanes to about 6 by the looks of it.  What makes it interesting is the fact that they don't do it a little section at a time; no, it would be far grander to do all of it at once.  So step one, scrape off the old tarmac.  All 67km of it.  Now what's next?  Ah yes, gravel to lay the base for the extra width, delivered in hundreds of painted trucks.  And so on.

Which makes for an exciting drive (especially at night!):  bouncing over rough gravel and patches of old tarmac, blinded by the full beams of oncoming trucks, every now and then having to switch which "lane" you're driving in to avoid piles of newly-delivered gravel, and occasionally screeching to a halt in front of an unmarked 10-foot pit in the road.  Why do it any other way?

Lepidoptery 3 - Striped Tiger

A pretty flower in our garden