Saturday, September 26, 2009

The Fate of a Yellow

I had a mission on 19 Sept. Armed with some necessary stuff, I reached Punggol wasteland slightly earlier than BJ. Look at this shot below, you can imagine what would happen to the site . By the time I posted this blog article, I guess the hoarding should have been up and entry to the site would be difficult or impossible. The moment I reached there, I started to search for NBGY, No Brand Grass Yellow (Eurema brigitta senna) larva on the host plants - I found this sad ending to a last instar larva. The weather was rather unpredictable. In a short time, dark clouds gathered rapidly and soon I felt rain drops falling on my head. I quickly informed BJ that I would wait for him at the nearby Kopitiam.

Once again, we had to spend some 20 minutes or so chatting over a cup of tea waiting for the rain to stop.

After the rain, we managed to trans-locate a few NBGY, mainly females, from Punggol to Seletar.

This record shot captured the moment of a female laying egg at the new site soon after she was released. We hope that these females would lay many eggs at this new site and their offspring would establish a permanent home at Seletar.


This is Apis dorsata. There was quite a number of them at the Punggol site feeding on the yellow flowers of Aquatic Sensitive Plant (Neptunia plena).

A. dorsata looks similar to A. carana , but larger in size. I just wonder what that orange thing on its leg is. I was rather lucky to snap an in-flight shot as this bee was rather active and never remained long on the flowers.
This may be a species of Scolia wasp. It was found "rotating" itself on a Lalang grass blade. A pair of short antennae and the big eyes on this wasp make its appearance a bit different from other wasps. This looks like a Broad-headed bug. I notice that its eyes are situated at the sides of its head which has a triangular shape. This robber fly was taken at the Seletar site while we were on our way back. The weather turned bad again and I had to take this shot quickly before the rain pouring down again. The fate of this Yellow species now depends on whether it can adapt to its new habitat at the Seletar site which is not really the same as that of the Punggol wasteland. But we have tried our best to trans-locate and conserve this species. However, we hope that the relevant authority would assist us in our future conservation effort.

3 comments:

  1. Bravo! It's good to know you are out there looking out for our butterflies!

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  2. great pics. awesome work. which camera and lens?

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  3. Hi
    I am using Nikon D200 and Tamron 180mm F3.5 macro lens

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