Flowering Syzygium Trees Part 1

I knew there were one or two flowering Syzygium trees at this forest fringe so I went to take a look on a rather hot and humid Saturday morning (20 Apr). I was greeted by a few Lascars which were gliding from shrub to shrub with high alertness. This is the only shot of a Malayan Lascar (Lasippa tiga siaka) when it perched momentarily on a Singapore Rhododendron leaf.

A Yamfly (Loxura atymnus fuconius) was flitting nearby. It found a high perch on a stem of a forest vine and "communicated" with some red weaver ants - interesting interactions between two different insect species.

Here is another shot.

The Acacia Blue (Surendra vivarna amisena) seemed to be very common in this area. This fellow was quite cooperative, staying rather still on a low perch in a breeze.

A different background colour when the late morning sun was blocked by some passing clouds.

This skittish fellow which looks like a Dot-Dash Sergeant (Atyma kanwa kanwa) was never kind to me - it preferred high perch most of the time.

At last I bumped into Khew and other ButterflyCircle (BC) members who were shooting at the flowering Syzygium trees. I noticed different species came to feed on the flowers at different times - in the late morning, spread-winged skippers seemed to visit the flowering trees more often than other species. A solitary Hieroglyphic Flat (Odina hieroglyphica ortina) kept some of us excited and busy for a while.

At least a couple of the Ultra Snow Flats (Tagiades ultra) were quite engrossed in feeding also.

This common species The Large Snow Flat (Tagiades gana gana) was not a surprise to us.

I suspect this is another specimen when it rested high on a leaf.

Some uncommon butterflies were also attracted by the flowers but they came at different times. I didn't know when this Yellow Flash (Rapala domitia domitia) came to feed on the flowers again. Though it wasn't a pristine specimen, we were very happy to snap some shots of this rarity.    

I quite like this "environmental" shot as it showed us how it manoeuvred in a "sea of flowers".

Having a pair of long and unique tails, The Great Imperial (Jacoona anasuja anasuja) is rather rare and it is one of the largest lycaenids that we can find in Singapore. I was lucky to snap a couple of shots when it appeared in front of me for a very short span of time.

I seemed to have luck with The Cornelian (Deudorix epijarbas cinnabarus) butterfly - this was my third sighting in the past few months. 

Let me showcase more pictures in my next blog post.