Things We Find in the Woods Part Ten

Field work is in full swing, and that means ample opportunities to see neat new nature and wildlife! First of all, how about this super weird thing we saw in the water at Pulau Ubin?! It was long and squiggly and undulated all over the place. At first it looked like a long pink ribbon drifting through the water, but a closer look revealed that it was generating its own rhythmic movements. I think it's some kind of sea worm, but I couldn't find any more information about it in my handy dandy Singapore Biodiversity Encyclopedia.

I've never seen a sea creature that looks like a ribbon dancer!

Speaking of things that squirm and slither, how about THIS thing?! It's a terrestrial flatworm. Yes, that orange thing is its head. As my supervisor so accurately stated, "That thing looks like something out of X-Files." True. It behaves strangely too, eating up earthworms like they're going out of style!

Probably the weirdest wildlife I've seen in SE Asia. About 15 cm long.

At first we weren't seeing many snakes, but one day at Bukit Timah I saw an elegant bronzeback. I love those snakes - they're long and super skinny, and they're harmless, so I feel pretty safe observing them.

Who can resist this cute little guy?!

My bronzeback sighting seems to have broken our snake dry spell, because the next week we had a two-snake day! First I spotted this guy in the weeds off the trail. He's the venomous Wagler's pit viper, so we gave him a wide berth and moved on.

Not a great picture, but you get the idea!

A couple of hours later, I found ANOTHER snake. And guess what! It was a snake I've never seen before! When I first spotted its bright colors, I definitely thought it was venomous, but then I remembered a little rhyme my dad learned in the army,

Red to yellow, kill a fellow

Red to black, friend of Jack

I'm not sure if it's 100% accurate, but in this case, it was right. This red-to-black reptile is the harmless twin-barred tree snake, which is capable of gliding through the air, just like the paradise tree snake!

A NEW SNAKE!!! HOORAY! I wish Bryan could've seen it!

OK, I made it halfway through a nature post without mentioning monkeys. That's the best I can do. So. One day in MacRitchie we encountered a group of monkeys we'd never followed before. We'd been around them for about 5 minutes when they started alarm calling. That usually means that there's some kind of threat around - if the monkeys aren't habituated to people, they might alarm call at them. They also alarm call at other groups of monkeys and a variety of potential predators, including dogs, snakes, crocodiles, large monitor lizards, birds of prey, and more. We were pretty sure that we weren't the source of their distress, so we started looking around for what they were all worked up about. We didn't see anything, but the alarm calling went on and on for about a half an hour. We finally saw the root of all the excitement when this guy lumbered slowly around the bend in a little forest stream!!!

He was HUGE!

He was bigger than an adult monkey. I don't blame them for alarm calling!

If you know me well, you probably know that I ADORE turtles. They're probably my favorite animal after monkeys. Singapore has lots of red-eared sliders, but unfortunately I haven't observed many other turtles in the wild here, so this was really a treat. I think this is a Malayan flat-shelled terrapin, but I could be wrong, so any other suggestions are welcome!

Up until a few months ago, Singapore had a railway that connected to Malaysia (read a neat blog post about it here). The train tracks ran right next to Bukit Timah, and there were lots of fruit trees along the tracks, so the monkeys spent a lot of time there munching on fruits. When the train service stopped, Singapore decided to remove the tracks, and there's discussion of turning the old rail path into a green corridor (hooray!). I followed the monkeys to the site of the old tracks one day, and was astonished to see how well the land had recovered from the tracks. It looks like there was never anything there!! The section of tracks in the photo was left behind presumably because it runs across an overpass and would have been more difficult to remove.

Hard to believe trains were running here 6 months ago!

Of course, no nature post is complete without monkey photos! The road that leads up to the Visitor Center at Bukit Timah recently had new drains installed and the monkeys discovered that the drains make an excellent fort! They played in them for hours, popping in one hole and out the other, tackling each other, and wrestling.

Check out mah new FORT!

Go find your OWN playhouse. This one belongs to the Hindhede monkeys!

Watch out for lots more wildlife posts in the months ahead!

Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research

I've been dying to go to the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research. Maybe that's a nerdy thing to say, but it's true. It's a whole museum devoted to one of my most keen interests- nature and wildlife in Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, the opening hours are incredibly inconvenient: from 9-5 Monday-Friday, in the middle of when I have to work. But since I'll be switching jobs soon (back to NTU to work with the monkeys!) and have some vacation days to use up, I went ahead and took a Monday off for my museum trip.

The museum is located at NUS, which is right near Bryan's work, so I met him for lunch at Fusionopolis then took the bus to the campus. It turned out to be super easy to get there from the bus stop (there are signs to lead the way), and I was there in no time. The museum is up on the third floor of the Biology building, and admission is free. Hooray!

The museum was cool and quiet. I was the only person there in the middle of the day. At first it was really cool, but after a while, I'll admit that the dim lighting and animal carcasses gave me a little case of the willies. I felt like I was in Night at the Museum.

Cool! But also kind of freaky... a sun bear, a dhole, some kind of goat thing, a leathery turtle,
a tiger, a leopard, a pangolin, a water monitor, and a wild pig

I took it slow around the small one-room museum. There were lots of preserved specimens, many of them from Singapore's earlier days. Some of the specimens were labeled as from the 1890's or early 1900's. Many of the animals had been collected in Singapore, while others were animals that were native to S'pore but the specimens had been collected elsewhere. A lot of the animals that were listed as native were ones that I've never seen here, but would love to get lucky enough to spot.

Oriental small-clawed otter, currently endangered in S'pore

Dugong skull, collected off the coast of S'pore

A HUGE Asian softshell turtle

A rather rabid-looking specimen of the greater mousedeer

The animal I'm most keen to see in Singapore is the banded leaf monkey. They're the only type of monkey other than the macaque that still exists here. My super monkey researcher buddy Andie Ang studied them and found that there are more still living here than the 30 that were estimated to still be surviving. Way to go, Andie!

The rare banded leaf monkey

I would also very much enjoy seeing the pangolin. They're still around the island here and there, but apparently they're pretty elusive. They kind of kick butt. A lot of people mistakenly think that they're reptiles because they appear to be covered in scales, but the scales are actually made up of fused together fur. Pretty cool, huh?

One of the country's stranger residents

The pigs were interesting. Bryan and I have seen them in the wild at Pulau Ubin, but I didn't know much about them. Information posted at the museum said that the pigs were thought to be locally extinct, but they repopulated Singapore when some individuals found their way across the Johor Straits. They're now common not only on Pulau Ubin, but on the main island too, including in the Central Nature Reserves.

Wild piglets

I had known that tigers once ran wild in Singapore, and several times have heard AR Wallace's quote that Singaporean tigers were responsible for killing approximately "a Chinaman a day." However, I never knew that leopards were also local in the early 1900's, although, due to their secretive nature, they were not seen nearly as frequently as the more conspicuous tigers. While a lot of the specimens looked a little freaky or weird, the leopard had maintained its beauty even post-mortem.

Beautiful and intimidating

The Raffles Museum has chosen the common palm civet as their mascot. The plaque next to the mascot said "This animal was chosen because it is one of the few large native species in Singapore that is capable of thriving in man-made environments." That may be true, but what about the long-tailed macaque?! They're the masters of thriving in man-made environments!! If I was choosing a personal mascot, I would choose the macaque. They're resilient, adaptable, fun-loving, cute, and super smart. Civets are cool too, but I'm a macaque girl all the way.

RMBR mascot

Are you ready for something seriously creepy? Prepare yourself, because when you close your eyes to go to sleep tonight, this image may haunt you. I admit, I was all alone in that museum and when I saw this guy I started having all sorts of frantic thoughts about zombified monkeys, thirsty for human blood. It freaked me out, and I'm pretty sure this specimen could have starred in the movie Blood Monkey.

AHHH! Seriously. What. The. Heck.

Creepy specimen, compared with what a real live macaque actually looks like. Very little resemblance.

In the middle of the museum was a display of Southeast Asian animals that live outside of Singapore. There was a sweet little family of proboscis monkeys from Borneo. They were cool, but, much like the detached rhino head in the corner, it made me sad to think about how all these dead animals had met their demise (even though many of them had been dead for about a century).

Less creepy monkey specimens

A Sumatran rhino, missing a rather significant proportion of himself

I love these weird guys!! A juvenile tapir.

After spending an inordinate amount of time ogling Southeast Asia's interesting mammals, I moved on to inspect some of the local specimens of birds, fish, and reptiles.

King cobra...another one I've never seen! Maybe that's lucky!

Keeled rat snake

Black & red broadbill in front, green broadbills in back

That's a LOT of dead birds!

Massive orange-spotted grouper

It was pretty neat to see the crabs. I've had trouble identifying some of the ones that we've seen in mangrove areas and along the beach, and there they all were, laid out neatly with orderly labels under each one. Perfect!

Coolest name = Dana's Eyes-Wide-Apart Crab

Coolest crab is definitely the hairy crab!!!

You know what else was pretty fascinating? The collection of insects! We'd seen some of them before, most memorably the giant forest scorpion (Pulau Ubin), the giant millipede (Bukit Timah), and the atlas moth (Sungei Buloh). Have you heard that the atlas moths wing tips supposedly look like snake heads in order to ward off predators? Look closely and you'll see the similarity.

BUGS!!!!!!!!

Despite scaring myself silly by thinking about all the animals coming to life and attacking, I really enjoyed my time at the museum. I highly recommend checking it out for yourself. If you're a nature buff I'm sure you'll love it and even if you're not, you don't have much to lose - admission is free!

Things We Find in the Woods Part Eight

Well everyone, my apologies for not posting recently but I've been sick and laying around in bed, coughing and blowing my nose. Somehow that didn't seem blog-worthy. Anyway, because I haven't been doing anything too exciting, I made another compilation of fun stuff we've come across on previous nature excursions. I hope you enjoy, and now that I'm feeling better I should be posting again soon!

Man, we have been on a roll with the wildlife lately (well, until I got sick anyway). I think Bryan's mom visiting must have brought us good luck. When we were at Sungei Buloh, we saw this huge atlas moth. I saw one once before, at Bukit Timah, but this one was much prettier. These moths are just giant- this one's wingspan was probably about 9 or 10 inches. The females are even larger!

Male atlas moth

On Pulau Ubin, we saw this butterfly. I think it's a Burmese lascar, but a lot of the lascar butterflies (Perak lascar, common lascar) look really similar to me. Can anyone confirm?

One of Singapore's many lovely butterflies

Bryan photographed this bird at MacRitchie. It looks like some kind of flycatcher to me, possibly a young Asian brown flycatcher.

Fragile little bird

One day Bryan and I were walking down the street right next to our apartment when we heard a cacophonous racket in the trees next to the sidewalk. We looked up and saw three robust birds just squawking away. We'd never seen them before, but I recognized them by their appearance and all the noise they were making. They were Asian koels- two females and one male. Asian koels are members of the cuckoo family, and are interesting because they engage in something called brood parasitism. This means that koels don't build their own nests. Instead, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds (here in Singapore they often use myna nests). Koels usually lay one egg at a time, and they choose nests that are already occupied with eggs. Then the mother tending the nest hatches the koel egg right along with her own! Sneaky! Unfortunately, on the day that Bryan and I spotted the koels, we were just taking a stroll to the store so we didn't have a camera and so we have no photos to share. But we'll be on the lookout for them again!

On our last trip to Sungei Buloh, we saw a green crested lizard right near the entrance. I was told by an NUS biology professor that green crested lizards used to be quite common, but they've been largely displaced by the invasive changeable lizards that are now everywhere. I see changeable lizards on an almost daily basis, just hanging around on the bases of young trees, right along the sidewalks. I've only seen green crested lizards a handful of times, and always in a nature reserve.

The native green crested lizard

The invasive changeable lizard

Another of Singapore's invasive species is the red-breasted parakeet. The bird is common in Changi Village, on the east side of Singapore. In addition to the parakeets, there are also cockatoos. Both birds were introduced through the bird trade and managed to reproduce and thrive in their adopted habitat (more info about the birds of Changi here). I was eager to show these birds to Kathy and my friend Shira when they were visiting, so I was walking along the sidewalk, staring up into the trees. I was so focused on finding the birds that I wasn't paying attention to where I was going. And...I slammed right into a lamp-post. Headfirst. I hit it so hard that my head rocked backward and I saw stars. The sound of my head hitting the pole (GONNNNNNNNG) reverberated over and over through my skull. Bryan, Kathy, and Shira all stared at me and tried not to laugh. They did pretty well for about 3 seconds before they just couldn't help themselves anymore. And who could blame them? If I'd been able to see straight and if my ears weren't ringing so loudly, I probably would've laughed too. I'm sure the hundred or so people eating at the hawker centre 10 feet away got a kick out of it. Sigh. Anyway, we found the parakeets.

Was this bird sighting worth a lump on my head?

Speaking of invasive species, how about this red-eared slider pileup?

Like a stack of dirty dishes. Except cute.

We don't just find animals in our wanderings. Sometimes we find cool plants too. Like this dewy purple flower (yes, you can laugh about the fact that I know the names for the animals, but refer to all the plants as "pretty flowers" or "big trees").

Flower on Pulau Ubin

Young leaves, a monkey favorite

We were on Pulau Ubin when we took the picture of the flower. That same day, we say a red jungle fowl, which is the ancestor of the modern chicken. The jungle fowl was really skittish and took off deep into the woods as soon as we saw it so, sadly, we didn't get a photo. However, we did get a photo of some random chickens we saw inexplicably wandering around East Coast Park one day.

Not red jungle fowl.

Chickens aside, Bryan and I have both gotten way better at spotting wildlife since moving to Singapore, but we still aren't that good at spying the local insects (aside from the mosquitoes. I can ALWAYS find them). But since I started following this blog I've been more vigilant about looking for insects. We recently managed to find this superbly camouflaged grasshopper at Sungei Buloh. Isn't he neat?!

Patience, young grasshopper

Sungei Buloh is totally our hotspot for wildlife. We also saw all of these awesome things there:

Little egret

Spotted house gecko

Batik golden web spider

Yellow-vented bulbul

Again, I leave you with my favorite, the lovable long-tailed macaque. This is Catherine lip-smacking at Arwen.

Monkey love