The last time I take stock of the unexpected wild visitors to my home was in January. Since then, I continued to receive such visitors. Majority of them were flying ants that came with a pair of wings. The larger size ones might looked rather scary, especially with their visible jaws. Flying ants might occasionally appear in large numbers after rain and they like to gather around lightings in the late evening. They usually looked quite different from the ants that we are familiar with making it hard to connect the two versions.

Last week, a new ant species appeared out of the blue at my potted plant area along the balcony. It was the Cocoa Black Ant (Dolichoderus thoracicus), that roamed the nearby park. Though the ant was common in the park, it was unlikely that it would track the long distance to an urban structure such as an apartment block. This particular ant colony only gathered along the stem of the Air Potato Vine (Dioscorea bulbifera) that had regrown from my pot about 3 months back. It was probably a new colony established by the winged ants. There were already a few established ant species around the balcony area. Time will tell whether the Rambutan ants could eventually carve out a territory for themselves.

Besides ants, there were more exotic insects such as moth, skipper, shield bug, beetle and flying termites that came by in the last 5 months. The moth happened to be the largest moth species in Singapore --- Atlas Moth (Attacus atlas). It kept fluttering around the ceiling lighting in one of the late evenings before flying off the balcony to the surrounding darkness. Hence, I had to make do with the airborne pictures of the moth. The Common Redeye skipper (Matapa aria) actually spent a night in my bedroom before I spotted it in the morning.

Previous notes on wild visitors: | 11 January 2015 | 15 June 2014 |