Butterfly Watching and Photographing Deep In the Forest

I was privileged and delighted to be invited by Mr Teo to join him and Cher Hern hosting a Japanese butterfly researcher Dr Inoue A. Takashi who visited Singapore on 22 March. We brought our guest to the nature reserve for butterfly-watching, specifically looking for the Great Helen (Papilio iswara iswara).

After one quick round of butterfly-hunting at Upper Seletar Reservoir Park, we decided to head to the Upper Peirce Reservoir Park (UPR Park) and its nearby trails.

Behind the toilet at the UPR Park, Cher Hern spotted an early instar of the Plain Nawab's (Polyura ebe platus) lava resting on a Red Saga (Adenanthera pavonina) leaf.  Here is an excellent write-up on its life history.

The forest trail was exceptionally calm and quiet until the sun began to warm its denizens up in the early afternoon. An instinctive record shot was what I could get when I spotted this Grand Imperial (Neocheritra amrita amrita) above my eye level.  

An Arhopala was having a peaceful perch along a shady forest trail until my camera flash triggered its alertness. You could see how it reacted to the flashlight.

In order to take a record shot, I had to switch off the flash light. Thanks Dr Seow from BC who helped me to identify the species as the Raffles' Oakblue (Arhopala pseudomuta pseudomuta).

Again, CH's sharp eyes spotted a young lava - hopefully it would grow into a Commander (Moduza procris milonia) in a few week's time.

The size of the rings on this Malayan Five-ring (Ypthima horsfieldi humei) were smaller than the usual sizes that I usually saw.

I bumped into some puddling butterflies on a small patch of sandy ground while we were on our way out of the forest. But all the four papilionids in the picture were extremely skittish - they took off hastily when I inched closer. 

However, this Silver-Forget-Me-Not (Catochrysops panormus exigus) stayed on the ground for us to snap a few shots.

It was accompanied by this Common Line Blue (Prosotas nora superdates).

We hope that Dr Inoue A. Takashi  had captured some video clips of the Great Helen when they were fluttering speedily past us a few times. Though we didn't get to photograph many butterflies in this outing, we did see quite a number of species of butterflies in the early afternoon. 

We really enjoyed this outing with our visitor and a big thank you to Mr Teo for giving us a lunch treat and sending us this picture.