Preface

After we saw the new book written by Mr Khew Sin Khoon about Butterflies of Singapore, we are all mesmerized by the content. Mr James Young, our Chairman, contacted Mr. Khew and got a prompt reply. Many thanks to both of them; we started to plan our trip. Though Mr Khew is not available at the time we planned, he is kind enough to call guys from the Butterfly Circle to lend a helping hand thus we go ahead and went as planned.

The Trip

Day 1 (3^rd June)

Manson and Gigi took the afternoon flight to Singapore while the rest of us took the late flight. To stay close to our targeted butterfly spots, we lodged at Sloane Court Hotel, a boutique hotel close to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. As we didn’t rent a car and the butterfly spots are not located at a great distance, we took taxi to go around. There were no activities on the first day.

Day 2 (4^th June)

Our host, Mark and Antony of ButterflyCircle had come to meet us early in the morning though the weather forecast was gloomy. We had breakfast at a nearby Food Court. It was still raining after breakfast but we anyway started our trip. We went to Dairy Farm Nature Reserve near Bukit Timah Nature Reserve where we were joined by another two members from the Butterfly Circle, Ben Yam and Yao Yang. There was a bicycle trail and many walking trails inside the Reserve. We started by walking along a piece of grassland besides the bicycle trail. The first butterfly to greet us was a Peacock Pansy. It looks similar to the one we have in HK though it is another subspecies. With the help of Mr Khew’s book, we identified the species and found that we shot all the Mycalesis in that day except the Malayan Bush Brown which we shot 2 days later. After a short burst of sunshine, it started to rain again. We went back to the entrance for shelter and waited till the rain stopped. Then we started to walk along the Wallace Trail. We were lucky to see a Flos apidanus saturatus in a distance, but no one was able to take a good shot before it flew away. Actually only Arex and I saw it. We did not see any Flos in the rest of our journey. We left after the sky went dark. We had our dinner at Lao Pasat for local delicacies.