A Guided Walk at Sungei Buloh

Bryan and I have been to Sungei Buloh quite a few times now, and we always enjoy it. We've taught ourselves a lot about the nature of Singapore, but when an opportunity came along to go on a guided walk at the wetland reserve, we thought it might be a chance to learn something new, so we took it. The walk was organized through the National Population and Talent Division. The agency organizes events for foreigners living in Singapore, and sometimes we get kind of random things from them. We got invited on this nature walk, and they also sent Bryan a $5 Starbucks gift card in the mail for no apparent reason.

We met everyone else who signed up bright and early on a Saturday morning. Then the organizers gave us free notebooks, little motorized fans, and sandwiches in big plastic containers. It was a nice gesture, but I feel like every time I go to an organized, supposedly environmentally-friendly event around here, I get handed a bunch of plastic crap I don't need. It's kind of counter to the intended message. Anyway, once everyone was all signed in, we loaded onto a big private bus and had a smooth ride up to the reserve.

As soon as we got there, guess what I spotted just inside the visitor center?!?! BATS! Lesser dog-faced fruit bats, to be exact. Two of them, hanging upside down from the roof beams. The NParks attendant at the front counter said they just kept sticking around after all the other bats left. Aren't they neat?! I know bats are associated with creepy things, but I think they're amazing. I mean, seriously, echolocation is sweet. You just wish you could do it.

Also known as the short-nosed or common fruit bat.
(Insert cheesy vampire joke here).

When we were done craning our necks to ogle the bats, we met our guides, who coincidentally were from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, where I just went last week! Our busload split into two groups, and our guide spent some time telling us a lot of stuff that we already knew about Singaporean nature. Bryan entertained himself by taking pictures of some little tadpoles we found nearby.

BABY FROGS!

Pretty soon our group set off on the mangrove boardwalk just next to the Visitor Center. As we walked along, our guide told us about some of the plants we were passing. I don't know as much about Singapore's flora as I do about its fauna, so I was enthusiastic to learn. For example, did you know that the fish-tail palm is covered in little needle-like spines that can cause reactions if you touch it? But if handled properly, it can be tapped for its sap! Just don't rub yourself all over it.

Fish tail palm

Our knowledgeable guide

Crabs were all over the place, especially tree-climbing crabs. We stopped a couple of times to admire spots where a whole bunch of crabs had congregated together.

Crab party!

Way more happening crab party!

Tree-climbing crab

About 15 minutes into our walk, Bryan had a great sighting. A SNAKE! In the water! It was a dog-faced water snake (our second "dog-faced" sighting of the day!). We'd seen this type of snake one other time, also at Sungei Buloh, and Bryan had been the one to spot it then too. I think he has superpowers when it comes to seeing snakes in the water.

This snake's diet consists mostly of fish

As our group stood, peering over the edge of the boardwalk at the water snake, another guided walk came by. Their guide told our guide there was another snake up ahead. We moved on, and before long, we found it! It was another species that Bryan and I have seen at Sungei Buloh in the past (actually, on the same day we saw the dog-faced water snake). The snake was a mangrove pit viper, which is, in my opinion, one of the most awesome snakes in all of Singapore. They have RED EYES and they're venomous and aggressive, but tend to be less active during the day. This one looked like it was probably still a juvenile.

Mangrove pit vipers are also called shore pit vipers

I was interested in what our guide had to say about the plants around us, but it was all a little more dull after the excitement of seeing two snakes in one day. Anyway, she introduced us to the fish poison tree. Apparently Malay fishermen used to use the fruits of the tree to poison fish in the water. The fish would float to the top, and the fishermen would collect them up. Makes fishing sound a lot easier than what my dad showed me how to do, which involved hooks, hot dogs, and a LOT of waiting!

The fruit of the fish poison tree

We also saw these really funky roots, which I thought looked like something out of a Salvador Dali painting.

Trippy mangrove roots

Picturesque canopy

Another plant also had unique fruits, but I don't think they had any poisonous properties. It's kind of like a star, but I guess "starfruit" was taken.

Star-shaped fruit

We also saw some insects, but unfortunately I'm no good at identifying them. I liked this bright red one though!

Cool bug. I guess it's obvious I'm not an entomologist!

Of course, no trip to Sungei Buloh is complete without the mighty water monitor! We saw plenty, and our guide informed us of something I didn't know. These guys are poisonous! Apparently their bite is mildly poisonous, which is problematic for smaller animals (although if they're in the jaws of a water monitor, I'm guessing their day is pretty much ruined anyway), but isn't too threatening to humans. I had no idea.

The water monitor should be the official mascot of Singapore's wetlands.

So, a two-snake day at Sungei Buloh. Not bad! And if you have an opportunity to take a guided nature walk at any of the reserves in Singapore, I recommend taking it. You might not cover a lot of ground (we sure didn't go very far), but you'll probably learn something!

Silly Signs Part Eight

As I said in the last sign post, there's a seemingly infinite pool of bizarre signs in Singapore. And I will continue to photograph them, despite the sidelong glances I get from people wondering what on earth I am doing. The first sign is one we found in the parking lot (sorry, I mean the carpark) at HortPark. I love the stars coming out of the guy's head!

I think I would die laughing if I saw this happen in real life. BOINK!

The next one is from Sungei Buloh. The wetlands reserve is also home to my all-time favorite Singaporean sign, the WATCH IT crocodile. This sign kind of gives me the creeps for some reason I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's those lush, disembodied lips. I don't know. But it's also entertaining because the sign is near the main entrance and pretty much every time I see it there's some unruly kid running around nearby, screaming or punching a sibling, leading me to wonder...what tranquility?

Enjoy the obnoxiously loud children.

Coming from the U.S., we're not used to seeing many typhoid and cholera awareness campaigns. And this one is kind of freaky. We found it outside at Reflections at Bukit Chandu.

Wash your hands. Or you'll get typhoid.

These new signs were recently erected at Bukit Timah. They are a cooperation between a Raffles Girls School club called Monkey Business and NParks. The signs give information about the monkeys and how to be around them without upsetting them. And the advice is accompanied by adorable cartoon monkeys! What's not to love?

They remind me of the evil monkey from Family Guy.

Things We Find in the Woods Part Seven

While Bryan's mom was visiting, we completed an epic tour of Singapore's nature spots, and we ended up seeing some pretty neat stuff along the way. Over the first weekend she was here, we set a new record in the snake-spotting game: THREE in two days! The paradise gliding snake at Chinese Garden that I posted about earlier, and TWO Oriental whip snakes, one each at Bukit Timah and Sungei Buloh. Neat, huh?

Bryan's nature photography skills are getting better and better! (B. Timah)

A different Oriental whip snake, at Sungei Buloh a day later

Also at Sungei Buloh, we spotted this sweet little white-breasted waterhen. These birds are very common in Singapore, and we see them frequently at Sungei Buloh and Chinese Garden.

I like the red blush-like spot on their beaks

Speaking of Chinese Garden, on our way home from the Chinese Garden MRT station one day, I spotted this unusual bird in a tree next to the sidewalk. I was excited by spotting a bird I'd never seen before, and quickly got out my camera. In my haste, I only managed to take one blurry picture before the bird flew away. But it was good enough for identification purposes: it's an Indian cuckoo!

Unexpected wildlife spotting

In keeping with the cool bird theme, here's a pretty olive-backed sunbird we saw gathering nectar from a bird of paradise flower one sunny afternoon at Chinese Garden.

So delicate

OK, one more bird before I move on to something less feathery. Here's a racket-tailed drongo Bryan spotted at MacRitchie one afternoon. I like these birds- obviously their tails are impressive, but I also like those beady red eyes.

Sometimes Bryan forgets and calls it a "durango"

On our most recent trip to Sungei Buloh we struck it lucky and saw an otter! It was nice because it meant that Kathy got to see the otter in all their adorableness.

Smooth otter

We also saw something else very exciting- a juvenile estuarine crocodile!!! We've seen crocs there a few times, but never such a little one. It was pretty special.

Doesn't he look as cool as a cucumber? A really scaly cucumber?

And of course, the ubiquitous Malayan water monitor.

This water monitor is also a juvenile.

Speaking of lizards, how about this cute common sun skink Bryan photographed at MacRitchie?

I think skinks look like snakes with legs.

While we're still thinking about lizards, Bryan and I have been seeing a lot of Sumatran flying dragons lately- on Pulau Ubin, in Kent Ridge Park, and at MacRitchie. Sadly, I even saw a dead one on the sidewalk outside Singapore General Hospital recently. It's strange that we've seen them several times in the past couple of months, because in the previous year we've only seen them once or twice. Maybe our wildlife spotting skills are improving by leaps and bounds, or maybe we just happen to be spending more time in flying dragon territory. Either way, we've enjoyed watching these fascinating creatures.

Male dragon

A few fun facts about flying dragons:
          1) You see those wrinkly flaps along the side of the lizard in the photo above? That allows him to spread out his skin and form a flat surface, which allows him to glide through the air like a paper airplane. The skin that he spreads out is called the "patagium".
           2) Male Sumatran flying dragons (like the one in the picture above) have blue heads, while the female's is a more bland gray and black.
          3) Another sex difference: the males have large, bright yellow throat flaps and the females have small, mottled blue ones.
          4) Sumatran flying dragons are also known as common flying dragons.
          5) Flying dragons are awesome. Disagree? Then you probably haven't seen this movie.

OK, out of lizard land and into the plant world. I am captivated by this photo Bryan recently took on Pulau Ubin, of a tree covered in sharp spikes. I've rubbed up against these things in the jungle before and they're about as vicious as they look. I think he did a good job of capturing their bristly essence.

Sending out a strong "Don't mess with me" vibe.

OK, I leave you with my absolute favorite thing that we find in the woods (or along the roadside, or foraging through the dumpster, or climbing on some unfortunate soul's clean laundry). The long-tailed macaque! Here are Catherine and Arwen, in the midst of an intense grooming session.

Catherine doing some serious grooming.

Arwen returning the favor

Arwen's one of the oldest monkeys in the group.

OK, that's all for now, but we've been seeing lots of interesting stuff lately, so hopefully I'll have more to share soon!

A Creepy Crawly Day at SBWR

Bryan got a new tripod recently, and we decided to go to Sungei Buloh to test it out.  After our awesome luck with wildlife spotting the last time we were there, we were hopeful about seeing some exciting stuff.  I got a little carsick on the taxi ride over, so just inside the reserve, we sat down at the visitor centre cafe and I sipped a 100 Plus while Bryan set up the tripod to capture some water monitor action.  There were seven or eight monitors hanging around the pond next to us, and they were really active.  They kept climbing up on the wooden platforms to sun themselves, but as soon as one would get comfortable, another would come along and chase it off.  It was pretty funny to watch!

The turtle and the lizard on the left were so nice and peaceful, just basking in the sunlight.  Then this guy came along.

As if one unwanted guest wasn't enough, this guy came along to crash the party too:

By then, the original lizard had decided that her little corner of the world was getting too crowded, so she got out of there.

As it turned out, the most recent newcomer wanted the whole place to himself, so he got rid of the other guy too.  But the turtle (a red-eared slider) stayed put, never batting an eye at those big scary lizards.

Eventually we tore ourselves away from the lizard antics and moved on.  As usual, there were flocks of birds around, fishing, squawking at one another, and bathing in the water.  Sungei Buloh is known for its abundance of migratory birds.

The sky was growing darker and darker as we walked along, so we started to look for a shelter to hang out in, not wanting to have a repeat of our last outing, when we got stuck in a huge storm with no shelter.  One of the neat things about the wetlands is that you can see peninsular Malaysia from there.  It looked pretty neat under the stormy sky, but the crummy lighting made it hard to get good photos.

That yellow structure there is the City Square Clock Tower in Johor Bahru.

We did find a shelter, and ducked in for awhile, hoping to avoid the impending bad weather.  I poked around the shelter while Bryan snapped photos of some birds, and I found something exciting in the corner of the roof.  Check it out!

I think this is a Singapore tarantula.  And I believe that icky white thing underneath it is an egg sac!  Apparently when those sacs open up, between 50 and 2000 itty bitty spider babies can come creeping out!  Yikes!  We stood there and watched it for quite awhile, but the hairy bugger never moved much.  I'm guessing they must stay pretty still while caring for those egg sacs.

The storm we were waiting for continued to hold out, so we left the shelter and ventured a little farther.  It wasn't long before we spotted another sizable spider.  This one's a Batik golden web spider.  We see a lot of them in the nature reserves, but this one was pretty big.

Again, a storm looked imminent, so we ducked into another shelter  to hide out for awhile.  There was a mudskipper nearby, and we had a good time watching him clean out his little mud hole.  Mudskippers hang out in these little mud circles that are filled with water in the middle.  They often disappear under water, then pop out and spit mud over the side of the hole, which is why the circles have a strange ring of mud blobs around them.

See the lovely blob of ejected mud in the middle photo?

He's an immaculate housekeeper.

Again, after hiding from rain that never quite came, we left the shelter and continued our walk.  On a somewhat lonely part of the trail where we don't run across a lot of people, we saw a big monitor along the walkway.  Sometimes they just lounge around until you get just close enough to bother them, then they leap up and flick their tails and rush off, making a load of noise and scaring you out of your wits.  I'd had this happen a few times, so I was approaching cautiously, not wanting to get clipped with that whip-like tail.  But as I crept closer and closer, the lizard remained absolutely still.  Bryan thought it was dead, but as we watched it, we could see it breathing in and out, ever so slowly.  We walked right past it on the trail, within inches of it, and it never moved a centimeter.  It looked perfectly healthy other than the fact that it wasn't moving, so I couldn't help but wonder if it had been somehow stunned, maybe by a snake bite.  It was very unusual.

Other odds and ends along the trail included a bright red dragonfly, a slimy snail, and some pretty views.

We headed out of the park right around closing time, and as usual, a huge water monitor popped out of nowhere and scared me half to death.  I don't think I've ever been to Sungei Buloh without having a monitor blindside me.  This one lumbered across my path just as I walked out of the bathroom by the visitor centre.  I guess I thought our nature experience was over for the day, but I was wrong.  I would be proved wrong again one last time.

Public transportation out to the park is a little infrequent- it's serviced only by one bus that comes about once every half hour- and taxis are reluctant to go all the way up there, so far out of the way.  So when we saw the bus breeze by just as we approached the bus stop, we decided to walk to a busier bus stop, and to try  to catch a taxi along the way.  It was a pleasant evening, and the walk was nice.  There were loads of bright orange male changeable lizards, and we having fun zigzagging across the empty road, shouting, "THERE'S ONE!!!!"  Eventually we made it to a busier crossroad, and we continued to walk along, looking for a bus stop, as there weren't any taxis around.  As we strolled along the grassy side of the road, I spotted what appeared to be a large tree branch a little ways ahead, right in our path.  We moved closer and it suddenly dawned on me that that was no tree branch.  My throat constricted with fear and excitement and I flung an arm out in front of Bryan and gasped, "SNAKE!  Biiiiiiiiiiig snake.  PYTHON!!!"  I couldn't BELIEVE it.  It was HUGE!!!  And it wasn't moving....

We inched closer a little at a time, and eventually surmised that the snake was dead, although it hadn't been dead long- aside from the dull eyes and a strange kink in its body, it actually looked all right.  It was probably hit by a car.  It was indeed a reticulated python, and it was probably somewhere between five and six feet long- a big snake for sure.  Even though it was dead, it was exciting to see one.  Although they're apparently somewhat common in Singapore (and apparently live in drains, often close to humans), they're nocturnal, and neither Bryan or I have ever laid eyes on one in the wild.  Neat!

So we had a day full of bugs, snails, spiders, lizards, and snakes!  Every little boy's dream!  And this 25-year-old girl's...