I did my second consecutive visit to the same park again last Saturday since I was again in the vicinity for another appointment and happened to have some time to spare in between. The time available was even shorter this time round --- about 45 minutes. The weather was not as good as the last round; it was drizzling but rather light when I arrived. Though it was around 2 pm in the afternoon, the lighting condition was not good due to the dark clouds above.

As I checked, the park was built in 1983. It was now home to many tall and mid-size trees. One of them was a lone, tall and fruiting Currant Tree (Antidesma bunius). Based on the 2009 Singapore Flora checklist, this was a non-native tree. I had seen them growing wild in many parts of Admiralty Park. It must have been naturalised a long time back. Relatively unknown to majority of the folks here, this tree was well known in the Philippines by the local name Bignay. There was even a wine produced from the fruits of this tree.

The tree that really caught my attention was the Mexican Lilac (Gliricidia sepium), that bore purplish-pink flowers. I had come across pictures of this tree but had not seen the actual tree until this day. This was also an imported tree.

The most exciting part of the brief walk was the captured of some pictures of a small wasp (likely to be a Potter Wasp, Microdynerus species) hovering close to the ground. It might be in the process of collect some mud to build. The pictures were not too clear due to the size of the wasp and of course, my slightly shaking hands with no support.

On the way out of the park, I saw a lone, mid-size bird landing on the concrete embankment of a large drain. I knew I had no chance to get a picture if I moved close to the bird. Fortunately, the built-in zoom of my compact camera did quite a good job this time. The bird, probably a Striated Heron (Butorides striatus), was a common resident in mangroves.

It might be just a short week apart between my 2 visits to this same park but I did get to see different things. In fact, I visited the park for the third time in a row yesterday afternoon where I took some pictures of the Grey Wall Jumper spider (Menemerus bivittatus) for the first time. Nature is always full of wonders and surprises.