I had to go to Joburg last week so I arranged to stay with Kevin and Stella Cockburn at their farm Twist over the weekend. I arrived late on the night of Friday 19th; and promptly got lost looking for Twist despite having been there hundreds of times. The corn had grown and it was dark! Luckily I have a cell phone and Kevin came out looking for me, carrying a cold one like a modern day St Bernard...

I posted some pix took this weekend on Photocamel:

photocamel.com/forum/macro-close-up-phot...photos-zululand.html

Kevin had to go to a meeting on the Saturday so I was on my own. Stella did a bit of phoning around and turned up her friend Cynthia who was keen for a trip into Msinga, where there was a gap. This place proved to be very attractive:



That big hill in the background is the western face of the massif that has Qhudeni Forest on it - the massive hard to get to forest northwest of Nkhandla. You can see a huge patch of virtually inaccessible forest on its west face. Awesome. The view to the northwest is also pretty good:



We found some interesting records up there, like this Millar's Hairtail Anthene millari:




Cupreous Hairtail Anthene princeps:



Clover Blue Zizina antanossa:



And Grass Jewel Blue Chilades trochylus:



On the way home I got this great panorama of the Tugela Valley, with Msinga Top in the right distance. Cynthia told me the Cherokee word for mountains fading endlessly into the distance is 'Cataluchee', which sounds very appropriate!

photocamel.com/forum/landscape-travel/10...ey-south-africa.html

The next day, I was supposed to go back up to Harrismith to go up the Platberg with Jeremy Dobson and Mark Williams, but I'd discovered by then I had to fly to PE on a work crisis first thing Monday - plus there had been a predatory bottle of Bells last night in Kevin's booze cabinet. So I had a lazy lie in and went up to Jack Mason's forest near Montello, on the Muden Road. This provided some great sport with the male Battling Gliders Cymothoe alcimeda trimeni I posted on PhotoCamel. I did manage to get a female on silicon but the specimen wasn't that great:




There were some nice skippers around as well; Lots of Mrs Raven's Flat Calleagris kobela:



And a single Large Flat Celaenorrhinus mokeezi mokeezi:

Nice going on the skippers, I can never seem to get close enough to them to get a decent photo