A Hike From Mandai Track 15 to Bukit Panjang

It is the north-east monsoon season during this time of the year.  We are expecting more rainy days and fewer opportunities for outings.

After a very heavy downpour yesterday morning (17 Nov), I could feel the air was fresher; the weather was cool and nice - so I went for a long hike. I decided to have a quick lunch at Bah Soon Pah Road before grabbing my shooting gears and heading to Mandai Track 15.

During the first half an hour, there was nothing interesting for me to shoot except for a diligent carpenter bee.

I just kept walking towards the direction of the expressway (BKE). Finally, I saw something worth taking some shots - a rather uncommon large dragonfly, a male Camacinia gigantean presenting a balanced and elegant perch on a climber.

Walking past underneath a flyover, I came to a shady water-logged spot  where I noticed another dragonfly. This is male Dark-tipped Forest-skimmer (Cratilla  metallica) - the distinctive blue metallic thorax and the black segments on the abdomen make it quite easy for us to identify it.

  A side-view shot.

A common shrub we can easily find along forest fringes is The Singapore Rhododendron (Melastoma malabathricum). I was waiting beside this shrub with many dry and ripen fruits, hopping some butterflies would visit them. Instead, a few wasps came and fed on them. 

When I was about to move on, a fast-flying lycaenid perched and open its wings immediately. Two instinctive shots were what this female Common Imperial (Cheritra freja Frigga) offered to me.

The highlight of  my hike was the encounter with this Common Red Flash (Rapala iarbus iarbus ). It was zipping around and rather skittish at first. Once it got used to my presence, it stayed on a leaf surface for a while.

Turning left into a small short-cut path, I found myself walking on a slippery and long stretch of grass patch running parallel to the highway. I am glad to mention here that a group of foreign workers were clearing the debris of a few fallen trees.

This small blue Halictid bee (Anthophora zonata) was buzzing around and feeding on the flowers.

It was accompanied by a wasp.

A surprise to me, I could see all the four Junonia butterflies at this particular spot. The ground was wet and muddy so I wasn't keen to chase after them. However, I could not resist taking a record shot of this intimate pair of Grey Pansy (J. atlites atlites).

It was almost 4 pm when I reached Zhenghua Nature Park and bumped into a skipper - I believe this is the Lesser Dart (Potanthus omaha Omaha) - my last shot from a long hike -  well, it wasn't  a   disappointing hike.

        

Butterfly Hunting on the Ninepin Group Islands (果洲群島), Hong Kong

Many thanks to a "last minute" invitation by Evengeline,  I was very fortunate to be able to join the annual outing to the Ninepin Group Islands (Kwo Chau Islands) on 2 July, organised by her and her husband (I overheard that people called him KK).

After attendance-taking outside the Sai Kung GeoPark, we boarded a relatively "luxurious" charted boat at the public pier as there is no public transport going to the island - about 15km in the southeast direction from Sai Kung town.

Slightly more than an hour of boat ride, we began to see a group of islands popping up from the waters.   There are no big trees on these islands - the surfaces are either barren or covered  by grasses or short coastal shrubs.

As there is no proper jetty on any of these islands, the boatman has to anchor the boat at deeper water and use a smaller speedboat to transfer us to the shore.

Shortly after the first batch (I was in) of people was transferred to the shore, the weather turned bad - heavy passing rain started to fall. 

Our main target of today's outing is to shoot the Common Grass Dart (Taractrocera maevius). A rather common species in India, but it is very rare in Hong Kong and can only be found in Ninepin Island in certain months of the year.

A rather small skipper, The Common Grass Dart blends very well with its habitat; especially so when it stays at the ground level. Thanks to KK who had spotted it twice at the small grass patch shown in the following photo.

I wasn't near the area when it was spotted by the sharp eyes of KK. So when I rushed to the location, a big group of people already surrounded it.  I could only snap one and only one record shot from a difficult angle.

After having our buffet lunch on the boat, we went o the North Island and continued hunting for the Grass Dart.

Despite so many pairs of eyes hunting for the little Grass Dart, we could not find it again. However, there were some other common butterflies we could shoot such as the Chilades lajus leucofasciatus.  .

I think this small light-house must be the only landmark on the North Island because I could not find any other prominent object on this island. 

While looking out for the Grass Dart, I came across a few small leaf beetles, either resting or foraging on plant foliage.

A slightly large beetle tried to shy away from my camera. 

Some insects were found on flowers too.

Here is another beetle feeding on flowers.

 A pair of day-flying moths

There are altogether 20 odd big and small islands in the Ninepin group - they are formed by volcanic rocks with hexagonal horizontal cross-sections.

  This Mycalesis mineus was hopping around before it settled down briefly.

Due to a warmer weather in the afternoon at the North Island, there were more butterflies flying around. A small Lesser Grass Blue (Zizina otis otis) was found resting on a dry leaf.

The Chilasa clytia is not uncommon in HK however, this female form clytia is not common. I could manage a long-distance record shot.  

A 2nd and possibly a 4th instar larvae of the Common Mime (Papilio clytia clytia) were found on its host plant which is unknown to me.

There were some interesting wild flowers on the islands. Let me share two shots to conclude this post.

An Unexpected Swallowtail Butterfly at Ngau Tan Mei (牛潭尾), Hong Kong

I did not post anything in the blog in the first two months this year because the butterfly activity during winter was extremely low.  On most weekends before March, the weather was really good for hiking but not ideal at all for butterfly-photography. 

My first butterfly outing with my usual group of butterfly enthusiasts after my CNY holidays in Singapore was on 10 March - a rare blue sky and cool Saturday morning.

We met at the Yuen Long MTR station before boarding a 5-seated taxi heading to  Ngau Tan Mei (牛潭尾) to look for our target skipper - the Caprona alida 白彩弄蝶, which I had shot before at the same location in July 2016.  As we hiked up to the mountains,  I could not resist taking some pictures of the beautiful panoramic views of  Yuen Long and Shenzen in the background.

Many butterfly photographers in fact came early than us and they had started to hunt for the target.

After combing the area for a while, I found nothing. So I broke away from the group and went to a hill top. I saw two swallowtails chasing each other without stopping - one of them looked very yellowish in flight and I wasn't very sure which species it was. In the mean time, a Ypthima norma norma was found flitting in the bushes close to the ground.

I was rather surprised to see a red dragonfly on a hill top.

With a bit of patience of staying put at the peak, I finally noticed a brown skipper zipping around me and it stopped on a foliage, giving me a chance for a few quick snap shots. My initial attempt of looking at the spots on the wings of this rather small skipper suggest that it may be a  Pseudoborbo bevani.

Its upperside shot may be useful for us to identify it with a greater confidence.

I guessed Ivy and Shan brought us luck. A few minutes after they came to join me at the hill top, the yellowish fast-flyer Swallowtail perched on some dry branches. Unfortunately, all my shots were "burnt" as I failed to peep at the view-finder to check my shots. 

We were the first few who got a shot of this non-HK resident - the Papilio machaon (Yellow Swallowtail). By the time we got some shots, more photographers rushed to join us.  When it perched again on a fern, it created a lot of excitement amongst us. Many of us approached towards it quite hastily as a result it took off  within a few seconds  -  but luckily from where I positioned, I could  take  a few shots of its undersides. 

However, it went to hiding around noon. But all of us were still waiting patiently for it to appear again.

True enough, its appearance at 2 pm created another round of excitement. This time it perched on the same type of dry leaves again but for a  longer period of time - which allowed more people including me to take up positions to snap some shots.

Though not completely parallel to where it perched, I must say that I was lucky enough to take these shots while it was swaying in strong wind.

While waiting for the Yellow Swallowtail to settle down, this pristine Papilio xuthus xuthus was seen feeding on some Bidens flowers - this is the only shot that I am quite happy with as it was just too fast on the flowers.

Not many photographers were interested in this rather common Five-dot Sergeant (Athyma sulpitia sulpitia).  

I feel  that its undersides are quite appealing to me.

It was a fruitful butterfly outing with lots of fun, excitement and nice company of many butterfly photographers. Hope that with the weather getting warmer from March onwards and having more blue-sky and sunny weekends, I would get to see and shoot more species before I complete my tour of duty and return home for good.