We carried out our first butterfly survey yesterday at Dhoby Ghaut Green (refer to map) on 4th February. A butterfly survey basically consists of counting the number and type of butterflies that visit a plot of plants in 2 minutes.
Through this, we are helping the NSS (Nature Singapore Society) to collect data regarding which kinds of butterfly plants attract which kinds of butterflies. The data will be used as a guide for future butterfly gardens. NSS has collected similar data from all the other hotspots on the trail, except for this one and the Tanglin Trail at Nassim Road. We chose to collect data from Dhoby Ghaut Green as the Tanglin Trail was recently set up in October and hence the data collected might not be accurate.
This is one of the butterfly hotspots along the ButterflyTrail@Orchard, Dhoby Ghaut Green. It is one of the more successful hotspots along the trail, isn't it beautiful! There are always butterflies flying around this area.
There were some butterflies we could not identify initially. However, after clarifying with Mr Anuj, our NSS mentor, we found out that the butterflies are called Plain Tiger butterflies and Autumn Leaf butterflies respectively. The Plain Tiger seems different from the ones we saw previously as it has orange hindwings, while the ones we saw previously had white hindwings instead. It turns out that these Plain Tiger butterflies are just a rare species of the same family.
We will be travelling to Dhoby Ghaut Green every week to carry out these surveys until around mid-April. By then we will have conducted about 10 surveys and collected sufficient data for analysis.
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