NBGY is Still Safe @ Punggol

It has been a week since the ground-breaking ceremony on the construction of a 4.9 km Punggol Promenade (a map can be found here ) on 15 Aug (see here). I am quite anxious and curious to know what has happened to this wasteland. So on a blue-sky sunny Saturday morning (22 Aug) I was once again checking out and roaming on this no-man's land alone. Apart from the patch of grassland running parallel to the Sungei Serangoon that has been cleared, the rest of the wasteland is still untouched. I have mentioned a few times in this blog that this wasteland is home to a newly discovered butterfly, the No Brand Grass Yellow (Eurema brigitta senna), NBGY in short. I am delighted to write here that I spotted at least half a dozen females fluttering around the host plants, busy laying eggs. Yes, we are all aware that the NBGY is vulnerable here, we certainly will help this species finding a new home. This beautiful damselfly Ceriagrion cerinorubellum was usually found in our nature reserves. So spotting it here was indeed a pleasant surprise for me. Another dragonfly was found resting at the ground level often. It looks like a female Diplacodes trivialis which I have shot at the same place before. I think this is a Lacewing belonging to the order Neuroptera. Lacewing has a pair of long antennae and two pairs of membranous and intricately veined wings, quite similar to dragonflies, except that the wings are folded to form an arch over the body when it is at rest. Katydid was usually well camouflaged with the foliage. However, this bugger was risking its life by exposing itself on a twig, the vast contrast allowing me to spot it easily and take a few shots. From far, I thought it was a Common Tiger (Danaus genutia genutia) in flight as I have seen it many times here. However when it perched on a flowering shrub (yet to identify it), I realised it was a male Black Veined Tiger (Danaus melanippus hegesippus). While he kept flapping his wings, I took a quick open-winged shot. Though it was a very torn specimen, I was delighted to post here, appending the list of butterfly species that were found in this wasteland.
This male Blue Pansy (Junonia orithya wallacei) was trying to puddle on the sandy ground under the hot sun - very skittish and did not stay long on the ground. As the sunlight was direct and very harsh, I had to take this shot without the flash.
I could only manage the upperwing shot of this rather large orange skipper feeding on the flowers of Spermacoce prostrata.There were many hover flies like this hovering at low level, perching from flower to flower. The brilliant yellow flowers of the Yellow Flame tree (peltophorum pterocarpum) which I wrote about before attracted a few carpenter bees (Xylocopa latipes ).
While developing new communal facilities for the residents, we should also treasure and preserve the wildlife there especially the very localised and the less common species. It is my hope that we record the flora and fauna before the whole habitat is wiped out by the construction work.