Spotted this butterfly late afternoon, hanging upside down and flipping its beautiful wings.
I took a picture of him earlier hopping around my Lantana camara plant.I always see this butterfly on that plant, he loves it. Look how lovely his wings are on the video below.
Location: Toril/ Habitat: Garden/ Family: Nymphalidae/ Species: Hypolimnas bolina
These white flowers, I don’t know the name blooms in bunches once in a while and the flowers will last for just half a day.
Its sweet scent will cover the entire area and the buzzing bees of course.
The bee with blue and black bands below is a regular visitor of my Lantana camara plant .I noticed him flying around that plant just last month. and it keeps on coming back.
These brightly colored yellow to orange fungi came out on the cracks and crevices of a dead wood.
The fruiting bodies started out as a single rounded stalk then as it gets older, it flattens towards the upper part.
Forming a shape of a spatula and widens up more, making it look like a fan. It grows in clusters or in rows. Some will branched out.
They are soft, bouncy and rubbery if touched. When expose to sun, they dried out and shrink
They became hardy and changed to reddish-orange in color, but after heavy rains, they turned back to their gelatinous appearance again.
Location: Toril/ Habitat: Dead woods/ Phylum: Basidiomycota/ Order: Dacrymycetales/ Family: Dacrymycetaceae/ Species: Dacryopinax sp. ~spathularia
This furled frond of a young fern had a gelatinous substance covering the entire rachis or the midrib of frond.
Some parts of it were insects trapped in the slime. It made me think that the mucous covering will served as its protection from the insects that feed on its sap.
And maybe, these ferns were sharing the same habitat together with insects that feed on young ferns. Well, just a thought.
Location: Buda/ Habitat: Forest/ Division: Pteridophyta
This polydesmid millipede was burrowing its way through the space between the ground and the log.
It has two pairs of legs per body segment. The legs are banded with color brown, white and orange with a brightly colored rustic brown to yellow paranota. It can also crawl upside down.
Location: Buda/ Class: Diplopoda/ Order: Polydesmida/ Species: Orthomorpha sp.
The shell was empty when I found this in the forest and I don’t know the name of the snail. Its color was interesting and new to me so I snapped a picture of it before I went on.
Location: Buda/ Phylum: Mollusca/ Class: Gastropoda
A fungi with twisted branching fruiting bodies, color black at the base and powdered grayish-white color towards the middle going to the top. It looks like a burnt twig covered with ash powder on its body. If you look closely, you can see powdered substance spreading out at its base.
We found this fungus growing on a rotten wood covered with mosses and leaf litters.
Location: Buda/ Phylum: Ascomycota/ Species: Xylaria sp.
Found in a rotten wood growing through the mosses. These fungi were small and erect. Appeared in masses and noticeable because of their contrasting black and white color.
The color of the base is black, powdery gray towards the middle and color white at the tip.
The fruiting bodies of this batch were not branching out, with single spike only.
Location: Buda/ Division: Ascomycota/ Family: Xylariaceae/ Species: Xylaria sp.
No, he’s not one of the ninja turtles. It’s a caterpillar, eating on a lime leaf. 🙂
It will soon become a lime swallowtail butterfly. It has no tail unlike most swallowtail butterflies.
The caterpillar’s length was about four to five centimeter and it consumed a lot of lime leaves. The poop was rounded and black.
Location: Toril/ Habitat: Garden/ Family: Papilionidae/ Species: Papilio demoleus
Pluto trail was accessed via municipality of Bansalan, Davao del Sur for two hours from Davao City. When we were there, we took another hour of a motorcycle ride, then a long hike on the road. This was the first time that I brought my younger sister Prescilla with me. I used to take Moondays with me, the other younger sister of mine. We were all eight on this journey. Leo also came with Sir Denz, his boss. As we were hiking, I enjoyed watching over those field of healthy green peas and green onions. Some peas were getting out on the road that I really wanted to snatched one of them. 🙂 At the end of the road we met Sir Denz’s porter named Blah’. I really like this guy, he’s full of energy and stories, one of the best porter I’ve known.
We spent half of the day trekking in an open trail of hills and farms. The heat was exhausting.
Another field of carrots was on our sight and the generous farmer gave us plenty of his nice carrots, I think I added two kilo of it in my pack. Ha ha!. Yeah, I know that the extra weight will drag me down but I couldn’t say no to it and we were really enjoying munching those carrots while hiking over the hills 🙂
Moving on, we journeyed through a seemingly like an unending open trail of hills, from scorching heat of the sun to the foggy and grassy slope. This is Pluto trail, one of the entry point of the country’s highest peak, Mt. Apo.
At around two o’ clock in the afternoon, we almost set an emergency camp in the hills, my sister was fainting and perspiring cold sweats . We stopped and after a long rest, her body regains strength and good to go. 
We pushed through because the hill was not a good site to camp.
There’s no water for cooking, it was very open and exposed to cold wind.
Moving forward, we passed the forest line and hit the first camp before dark. The sleep was uncomfortable because of the sun burnt neck, it hurts.
The next morning, I still had plenty of carrots. hehe. Even I and my sister had already eaten a lot of these carrots along the way, there’s still more left.
Everybody’s preparing to leave the camp and go for the summit.
