Butterfly Survey 8

Today marks a milestone - we spotted a pupa on a plant in Dhoby Ghaut Green, the garden in which we have been conducting our butterfly surveys, and we have (sort of) adopted.

While we have seen many caterpillars in the garden, this is our first pupa so far.

We spotted a pupa on the the Pseuderanthemum reticulum plant!

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Butterfly Survey 6 & 7

Recently, we have spotted the Orange Emigrant butterfly while conducting our survey. The Painted Jezebel butterflies are back too; they have been mysterious absent from our previous few butterfly surveys.

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Repotting Part 3 & Butterfly Survey 5

This was our third phase of our repotting project, and we are pleased to say that our garden is making lovely progress.

Apart from that, we added strong poles as suport for some of the younger and weaker crownflower plants so that they will grow straight. In a few weeks time, they will be strong enough that they won't require the poles, but until then, they are vulnerable to being knocked over by the regular winds and rain prevalent in our climate.

Afterwards, we went to conduct our butterfly survey. Due to the impending rain and the weather, there were not many butterflies, but it was indeed interesting to see the garden in a different mood, with all the insects getting ready to take cover from the strong rain.

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Butterfly Survey 3 and Visit to Science Centre Singapore

Today, we (Zek Min, Beverley, Vivian and Kate) went for the weekly butterfly survey. There was a surprising amount of plain tigers around, as well as (to our delight) a Common Mime (Papilio Clytia). Attached are a few of the photos we captured of the butterflies.

Vivian and Zek Min watching the plants for the butterfly survey.

Beverley and Zek Min during the butterfly survey

A Plain Tiger on a Snakeweed plant

A Plain Tiger on Lantana camara

The Common Mime which we spotted, on Pseuderanthemum reticulatum plant

Autumn Leaf caterpillars really like the Pseuderanthemum reticulatum plant.

After that, we visited the Science Centre Singapore to check out what it's like (some of us haven't visited it for years) as well as to brainstorm for ideas as to what we could do for our collaboration with SCS. Yuexin and Zhang Xuan met us there.

SAYES was kind enough to let us use their clubhouse for our discussion. Eventually, we decided that hosting a workshop during the June holidays might be a better idea than a booth, as booths require quick and fun activities that can get our point across, which we could not come up with at this time. Instead, a workshop about an hour long could help us spread awareness more effectively and to more people. We will need to write up a proposal and send it to SCS to see if they can help us with it. However, we hope that we can host a booth at one of the upcoming science events hosted by SCS, such as Singapore Science Festival or Kids Science Fest, but this will really depend on how much SCS is willing to help us (big thanks to them for collaborating with us so far!)

We also discussed our Inter-House Games (IHG) plan, which will involve an amazing race. Details can't yet be put up on a public blog, but we will be working on our proposal, as well as on a booth for Open House (hopefully). Meanwhie, we are also in collaboration with a German and Filipino school, as well as RGSEC, the science and environment club in our school.

Photos are attached of our discussion.

Discussing details

Science Centre from the view of the clubhouse. May not look like it in this picture, but it was actually quite crowded!

Picture after the session!

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Butterfly Survey 2

When we were carrying out our second butterfly survey, we discovered that the garden attracts more than just butterflies. Indeed, upon closer look, the garden is teeming with insects and animals. For example, there were bees that are large enough to cause a flower to sag when they landed on it, many types of snails, centipedes, millipedes and many other insects. 

We observed some caterpillars on the underside of the leaves, especially so for the Pseuderanthemum reticulatum plant. After clarifying with Mr Anuj, we found out that the caterpillar in the picture above is actually a caterpillar of the Autumn Leaf butterfly, and the plant is their common host plant.

Unfortunately, we also observed many birds flying overhead. This is worrying as birds are natural predators of butterflies and may pose a problem to the butterfly population in the coming weeks.

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Butterfly Survey 1

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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