More of the beautiful blooms of South Sinai! This time blue-purple flowers.
You can find IDs and descriptions for all of these plants – and more – in my book.
Download a free excerpt today! (Just enter ‘0’ where it says “Pay what you want”.)
Not all insects are bugs. True bugs form the order Hemiptera and include such critters as cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, and shield bugs. Most bugs feed on plants, using their sucking mouth parts to get at the sap.
Here you can see a nymph of a Lygaeid bug, a Bagrada Bug, Milkweed Bugs, a Black Watermelon Bug, and a Shield Bug nymph.
This collection includes one of my absolute favorite blooms – those on a caper bush! While they start off completely white, their color changes to pink and then a dark purple. Read about capers in this previous post.
Want to know more about the flora of South Sinai? Check out the free sample of my book!
Of the 142 plants in South Sinai that I have photographed (and identified), yellow flowers are the most prevalent. Do you recognize any of these?
You can learn more about the flora of South Sinai in my book. Check out the free sample!
Butterflies! I love them. I am enthralled by their process of metamorphosis. Over the years, I have raised dozens of them indoors and watched them grow and change from tiny caterpillars to delicate chrysalises to beautiful butterflies. Often I share this experience with my students, who are as fascinated as I am, learning along with them.
I am able to identify most of the butterflies I spot thanks to the book Butterflies of Egypt: Atlas, Red Data listing & Conservation by Francis Gilbert and Samy Zalat. You can download the book for free here. Many thanks to the authors for sharing this amazing resource!
In the photo collection above, you can see:
Large Salmon Arab (Colotis fausta)
Grass Jewel (Chilades trochylus)
Small White (Pieris rapae)
African Babul Blue (Azanus jesous)
Saharan Swallowtail (Papilio saharae)
Dark Grass Blue (Zizeeria karsandra)
Desert White (Pontia glauconome)
African Caper White (Belenois aurota)
African Monarch (Danaus chrysippus)
Pomegranate Playboy (Deudorix livia)
Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui)
Long-tailed Blue (Lampides boeticus)
Scarce Green-striped White (Euchloe falloui)
Mediterranean Tiger Blue (Tarucus rosaceus)
I’m taking a break from insects to share some beautiful red blooms with you today.
Top Row:
Milk Broom (Periploca aphylla)
Figwort (Scrophularia sp.)
Fire Bush (Calligonum comosum)
Bottom Row:
Sorrel (Rumex sp.)
Spider Flower (Cleome arabica)
Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis)
You can learn more about these and other flowers in my book.
Top Left: Giant African Mantis (Sphodromantis viridis)
Top Right: Desert Mantis (Eremiaphilidae sp)
Bottom Left: Cone-headed Mantis (Empusidae family)
Bottom Right: Egyptian Flower Mantis (Blepharopsis mendica)
The bottom two are in their nymph stage.
You can learn more about the Egyptian Flower Mantis in this post.
Beetles, forming the largest order of insects with nearly 400,000 identified species, account for nearly 40% of all insects. So I guess it’s no surprise that my collection of beetle images is one of my largest!
Here’s what you can see in this sampling:
Blister Beetle
Carpet Beetle
Darkling Beetle
Red Palm Weevil
Seven-spotted Ladybug
Hairy Rose Beetle
Jewel Beetle
and a few unidentified beetles (the blue/green ones…can anyone help with an ID?)
Wandering through Wadis 