Deep Inside the CCA

On a fine and sunny Saturday morning, while I was pondering where to go for my weekend hiking, a picture of the Banded Leaf Monkey (Presbytis femoralis femoralis) on the newspaper surfaced in my mind. I have not seen one before so I decided to venture deep into Central Catchment Area (CCA), hoping to get a glimpse of this endangered species.

The damp forest floor and the dead tree trunks due to the abundant rain fall in the month of November created the ideal growing media for many fungi. This is a kind of bracket fungus spreading out nicely on a huge fallen tree trunk.

This is another species which looks rather filmsy

I guess these black and elongated coral-like fungi sprouting out from the soil underneath another decaying tree trunk is a kind of coral fungus.

This is a rather small and colourful nymph of a cricket (?) with one exceptionally long pair of legs.
This is the side view.
I believe this damselfly is a male Coeliccia octogesima which was spreading out its wings rather evenly when perching at the side of a muddy forest stream.

This prodominantly white damselfly is a newly emerged teneral male Coeliccia octogesima. He even had a little companion on the wings to pose for me.

The Common Snow Flat (Tagiades japetus) tends to perch with its wings open flat on the leaf most of the time. However, this particular Common Snow Flat behaved a bit strangely as it folded up its wings partially when it was sunbathing.

After finding my way to overcome some really tough obstacles along the way, I finally came to the end point of this trail. At one particular spot, I spotted at least three different species of Arhopala.

The three pairs of white striae along the costal margin of the underside forewing distinguish it from another tailed Arhopala species which is A. athada athada and a tiny white spot in space 11 suggests that this is likely to be a Raffles' Oakblue (Arhopala psedomuta psedomuta).

This guy became docile and got used to my presence after my persistent stalking and chasing. So I could try shooting with different settings. This shot was taken with manual mode at 1/50, f8 and ISO800.

This is another tailed Arhopala species which unfortunately was a bit tattered for a possible identification. I feel that this may be a rare species that requires us to examine further. (Dr Seow TL has identified this as a male Arhopala agrata on the BC forum on 5 Dec, thanks a lot Dr Seow.

This male Lesser Herlequin (Laxita thuisto thuisto) did not like to stay still while feeding on the leaf surface. It kept turning around in a circular manner, testing my reflexes and patience of getting some decent shots.

Take a closer look at this picture and locate its proboscis. I wonder what it was feeding on - a mystery yet to be solved.

On my long way back to the main road, I spotted this small toad grasshopper which blended itself so perfectly with a fallen tree trunk that we could miss it if we were not observant enough.

This moth belongs to the family Callidulidae which really looks like a butterfly. I realise that this is different species from what I had shot before (see here).

This is a kind of soldier fly (a hover fly according to Alan, see comments below) . Though it resembles a wasp, its large compound eyes and the wing patterns are rather different from that of a bee or wasp.

My last shot of the outing was this orange skipper - perhaps a Telicota species which I really have great difficulty in identifying it.

I hope this underside shot with the forewing sub-apical "L-shaped" markings clearly shown here would enable someone to identify this species with confidence. (Note : Dr TL Seow from Malaysia, a member of the ButterflyCircle identified this a male Palm Dart (Telicota augias augias) on 11 Dec 2010. Thanks Dr Seow.

Trekking deep into our Central Catchment area was always tiring but rewarding - apart from what I was able to photograph, I spotted quite a few other butterfly species. But one disappointment was that the elusive Banded Leaf Monkey did not like to see me.