A Solo Visit to the Admiralty Park

The pre-dawn heavy rains lasted till morning forced us to abort a butterfly survey near the Eco-link bridge site on 2 Apr. Once the cloudy sky cleared up a bit in the late morning, I decided to head out to Admiralty Park in the northern part of Singapore - a park that I would not visit often due to its "remote location" from my home.

The shape of the Bush Hopper (Ampittia dioscorides camertes) is rather different from other orange skippers. Initially, it reacted to the camera flash, however after a few shots it got used to it. This dark brown butterfly which loves the grassy habitat, having a prominent white discal band across both wings is Nigger (Orsotriaena medus cinerea) - a common name that doesn't sound nice. Female Malayan Eggfly (Hypolimnas anomala anomala) was often seen to guard her a large number of eggs in a cluster. This rather old mother Malayan Eggfly was seen guarding her newly born babies underneath a leaf on its host plant. She was still alive but she was just too weak to flutter at all. I am not sure if this bee is Apias dorsata. There were quite a number of them congregating at the inflorescence of the Nipah Palm (Nypa fruticans) - an endangered mangrove palm in Singapore. I was lucky to be able to shoot this guy in flight. I didn't know another bee was following behind -what a pity that the second bee was not in focus. Shooting a nectar-feeding Yellow in the wild needs lots of patience and luck - it was no exception when I had to wait patiently near the wild flowers, perhaps a Oxalis species, to nail this shot. Displaying only one cell spot on the forewing beneath, this yellow butterfly looks like an Anderson's Yellow (Eurema andersonii andersonii). It was rather quiet in the park - not many species for me to shoot So when this pinkish orange bug, quite a few of them, appeared on one of the Singapore Rhododendron shrubs I found it attractive and worth taking some shots. Finally, I would like to end the write-up here with a shot of this rather common micropezid fly displaying its "trade-mark" style.

This park is big and the natural mangrove habitat along the river hopefully would give nature-lovers surprises from time to time.