Harlequin delight at Kota Damansara Community Forest Reserve, Malaysia

It was good to be back in Kota Damansara again.  The familiarity of the place makes me feel at ease to go hunt for the flying jewels and the discovery of a big flowering tree in the forest reserve where lots of butterflies would feed was indeed a joy.  It was quite a galore time of variety of butterflies and I wish I had more time to stay.

Coming to Kota Damansara again for the short time that I have before returning to Singapore today was to look for the Harlequin and to get some good close up shots.  I knew where to find them and was glad they were still there. 

It was not easy at the start where I found one, just playing hide and seek with me.  It was there for a moment for me to take some shots and disappeared the next!  I waited and was advised by sifu to go a few metres into the forest. The advice from the experienced master was indeed a good one. As I went slightly deeper into the forest, I finally found these little harlequins.  I took shots after shots where it flew from one leaf to the other as if posing for me, indeed much to my delight.

 

It was time to reluctantly move on but quite excitedly remembered the big flowering tree I discovered earlier when I walked past to search for the Harlequin.  I had not quite noticed it in my previous visits, perhaps it was not flowering then, but there were lots of Blue Glassy Tigers, and Striped Black Crow, and various butterflies such as Ultra Snow Flat, Large Snow Flat, Forest Whites, Common Cerulean , etc that came to feed on the flowers.

 

The most pleasant surprise was to have taken shots of the beautiful and elegant Julia Heliconian.   I found out later from sifu and his blog, this is a South American species, which migrated from Thailand. More about the Julia Heliconian can be read in the following blogs:

Butterflycircle (New Taxon for Malaysia)

Butterflycircle (The Julia Heliconian's Samba Continues...) 

Butterflycircle (Paradisical Phuket)

Every trip that I had made to Kota Damansara Forest Reserve had given me different surprises.  I can now look forward to going back home to search for the flying jewels.  Till the next surprise!