Mucking about at Kranji

Solo this morning, so I thought I'd check out the Kranji mudflats.

People generally associate mangroves with mud, muck and mosquitoes. While that's true, there are also some unexpected marvellous creatures there. Sea anemones, for example. This particular one we've only seen in or near mangroves.

Elsewhere, the trees might be full of spiders or snakes. But in our mangroves, they're full of crabs!

These agile creatures have pointy toes to cling onto branches. At night, they clamber happily about among the branches and leaves.

This particular one is a Mama crab with eggs held under her tummy with a broad belly flap. See the black mass with small dots?

At night it's also easier to sneak up to shoot these agile flyers. The bright red dragonfly was fast asleep and didn't even blink an eye. But the moth with wings like a Stealth bomber was a little more wary.

The mud was teeming with worms, large and small. While many people might consider them icky, worms are among the important elements of the mangrove's food web. Anyway, some as quite pretty, like the irridescent bristle worm on the left, which was swimming! While the very VERY long pink worm on the right is a ribbon worm. Ribbon worms are unsegmented and hunt small creatures.

The Horseshoe crab is not actually a true crab and is more closely related to spiders. But these fascinating creatures are still regularly seen in our mangroves. The smaller male is often seen clinging to the back of the larger female. At low tide, they usually bury themselves in the mud. I saw several such pairs. There were also lots of tiny horseshoe crabs crawling about in the small streams created by the outgoing tide.

On one tree trunk there seemed to be a sea slater party going on. There were lots of them gathered about. I wondered what was going on and then spotted this pair. Hmm, looks like they're making new sea slaters! Sea slaters are not cockroaches and not even insects. (See, they have more than 6 legs). They are crustaceans like crabs and prawns.

Wow! I was really looking forward to seeing a crocodile. Or some other scary predator like the mangrove pit viper.

Alas, the only sign of a predator that I saw was the usual sad one.

This particular predator is cowardly. Laying traps that cause cruel, slow death to all kinds of lifeforms on the mudflats.

And the predator doesn't even eat everything that is caught. 90% of what is caught is usually thrown away.