Mandai Park Connector On 29 Aug

I dropped by at this Mandai Park Connector on 29 Aug which was an off day for many Singaporeans. I was quite fortunate to see and get a few butterfly shots during this short outing though the weather in the early afternoon was not very ideal for butterfly-hunting.

A few common Blues including this Gram Blue (Euchrysops cnejus cnejus) were fluttering around their host plant - a weedy ground climber, Vigna reflexopilosa.

Can you make a guess of this female lycaenid ?

I never expect I would see a female Scarce Silverstreak (Iraota rochana boswelliana ) open her wings fully in front of me - just a few seconds duration though. Look at the shot below, I am sure you could guess that she made a huge "vertical leap" to a leaf high up on a banana tree.

A brown skipper which looks like a Caltoris cormasa was zipping around with such a high speed that lost track of it. Somehow, I just tumbled on it when it perched on a leaf for me to snap a few quick shots.

You would find this white butterfly called Psyche (Leptosia nina malayana) flapping its wings casually, looking for flowers at a low level along forest fringes or in our wastelands. This was one of the moments I like - a picture showing its close affinity to its larval host plant, the Purple Cleome ( Cleome rutidosperma).

I noticed ants were usually found on the flowers of Vigna reflexopilosa. Take a loser look you should be able to find something else on the flowers - an interesting and amazing biological mutualism demonstrated by different species.

This beautiful blue dragonfly, perhaps a Diplacodes nebulosa was rather common at one waterlogged spot along the trail.

On the whole, the weather in the month of August this year was rather unusual - wetter than before. As such, I was not able to go for a long trekking into some of our remote wild places or nature reserve areas for quite a while.