Sungei Buloh Volunteers 10th Anniversary

Spent Saturday night out with the first nature volunteer group that I joined. It is now 10 years old! Bravo!!

To celebrate, we were treated to a whole host of special events. I couldn't make it for the day festivities, and only snuck in for the night walk, led by Krish who shared all kinds of stories with us.

Jac and I re-lived the good ol' days when we used to explore every corner of Buloh together, and shoot the place to death. Jac was the senior guide there when I first joined and it's been yonks since we've spent time together at Buloh.

There were spiders galore!

Jac spotted several Ornamental tree-trunk spiders (Herennia ornatissima). The female is much larger (12-15mm) compared to the male (5-6mm) and she builds an orb web only a few mm above the bark with a silken cup in the centre of the web. We saw one having her dinner.

During the day, the Red tent spider is usually well hidden inside the dead leaf that she puts into the middle of her tent web for this very purpose. At night, she is a bit more outgoing. For some reason, Jac and I forgot the
name of the spider. We knew we'd slap our foreheads as soon as we got home and looked at the little spider book. It's Cyrtophora unicolor, Jac! *slap forehead*. This one is busy wrapping up her dinner in silk. In the upper right corner, you can see one of the little thieving spiders that squat in her nest, and also steal a little nibble of her prey. Apologies once again to the volunteers for blinding everyone when taking the photo.

When you see two ants dangling off a silken thread, you should know that something is up to no good. And it's the Ant-like crab spider (Amyciaea lineatipes) that mimics ants. And eats them! This one seems to have sucked out quite a bit out of the victim already. Eew! There were other hunting spiders out searching for dinner as well.

There was a spider with a very pretty butt. Possibly a lynx spider?

And other little insects. Besides the not-so-favourite mossies.

The short-horned grasshopper that looks like it's been dipped
in chocolate is a delight to encounter. As well as the amusing little katydid
with that typical "whazzup?" quizzical expression.


Little moths are just amazing when you take a closer look at them.


Chrysalis are so well camouflaged!
One under a blade of grass was bright green,
while another on a twig looked just like a shrivelled leaf.


At night, you really get to see the action. This little bagworm was busy munching
up its dinner. During the day, these larvae usually hang immobile,
their little bags making them look like twigs or bits of rubbish.


On the mangrove boardwalk, we got a really good close look at
the tree climbing crabs. These crabs are only really active at night,
when they climb right to the tips of branches.


The humungous tiger orchid near the Outdoor Classroom was in full bloom.
Each blossom was as big as my hand!

For me, the biggest treat was of course the Puff-faced watersnakes (Homalopsis buccata) at the Aquatic Pond. There are tons of them there! But they only come out at night. Fortunately, there were plenty of sightings without us having to make a virgin sacrifice, as earlier contemplated. Krish had an interesting personal story about them, but you'll have to ask him about it yourself.

The adult (above) is handsomely marked,
though a little duller than the juvenile (below).

For better photos of this beautiful snake, including one of it feeding on a fish,
see Kwok Wai's wildlife singapore website page;
and for all the details of the snake, see Chee Kong's slog blog entry.


While everyone was busy looking for snakes, most overlooked
the little frog that floated quitely among the duckweeds.


Jac spotted a sleeping tailorbird. We didn't want to wake it up
so we shot it without the flash. It didn't move at all.

Volunteers do really get to have a special experience of our wild places!

For more about other delirious night outings at Sungei Buloh,
see these previous posts on the wildfilms blog

Seeking Serpents at Sungei Buloh

Snakehunts at Buloh

Wild Things in the Business Times?!

Darwin came across this in today's BT. A photo of Chay Hoon (with The Now Much Loved Orange Box) and Marie in background. Both manfully braving the mosquito-infested growths at Pulau Semakau.



It appears this photo symbolises getting off the beaten path.

Other than that, it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual topic of the article.

The photos were originally taken by the New Paper team who came along with us last year on our Semakau Mangrove Survey in Jun 05 which was later covered in the New Paper in Jul 05

Critter of the week

Haven't posted here in a long, long while.

As the season has ended for the time being, I thought it would be perfect to start a new column (which will be weekly or bi-weekly depending on how often I can find and process clips), featuring some of our more quirky clips.

To start things off, this is a special clip entitled "What the...?', and as the name suggests, you're welcome to guess what it is featuring.

Note that this is the reason why we don't normally like to shoot solo at night. Juggling lights, camera, and assorted camera accessories with 1 pair of hands just isn't funny.

Wild Things Revealed

Preparing for my talk this Saturday about the adventures with the wildfilms crew, I've unearthed lots of photos.

Here's some that somehow escaped being posted on the blog...

It is important not to be the first to fall asleep in front of people who are itching to photograph or film something or someone. Lots of pixels have been devoted to innocents in various states of slumber. Film also captures snoring and drooling, which photos cannot.

Here, Jen Lee and Dr Chua are busy snapping away while poor Jo-tsze and Alvin lie oblivious. Resulting in what seems to be amusing images...

But we eventually get Jen Lee when she succumbs to the zzzs.
We've never seen anyone sleep with glasses over an eyeband...wazzup with that??

Why is it, everytime we are about to get on board during an amphibious landing,
someone will find something interesting in the water?

Gear all packed up in double-water-proof bags, everyone dead beat...and it's usually something special. Like a clingfish on a sea whip...darn.

Want more stories about the crazy crew and the equally crazy people
who come along for our trips? Come for my library talk this Saturday!

"Going Wild on our Shores:
Wacky Wildfilms Adventures"

19 Aug (Sat), 3-4pm
Woodlands Regional Library (Amazon Room)
Contact: Lim Poh Poh Poh_Poh_LIM@nlb.gov.sg

Slugs for the Sleepless

The last morning super low tides for the year has just passed. We visited all our favourite shores and it's been exhausting. No time to sleep much less process photos or update the blog.

For the wildfilms crew, the only thing that matters is the slugs that we manage to see on a trip. So the easiest way to update the blog would be to showcase ALL the slugs we saw this last month or so.

We saw a whole bunch of phyllids! Including a first sighting of a beautiful Phyllidia ocellata. This marvellous animal is usually only seen by divers. Phyllidia varicosa is also seldom encountered on the shores but we saw a really big one!

Left to right: Phyllidia ocellata, Phyllidia varicosa, Phylidiella nigra, Phyllidiella pustolosa

The usual suspects were encountered. The pretty blue-spotted Dendrodoris denisoni is not often seen, but we saw several. Possibly the season for them. They were big and busy. The very variable Discodoris boholensis is so frequently encountered we don't get excited anymore when we see one. So too with the pretty lined Chromodoris lineolata. There were just SOOO many Glossodoris atromarginata that we wonder what's going on.

Left to right: Dendrodoris denisoni, Discodoris boholensis,
Chromodoris lineolata, Glossodoris atromarginata

A very special find was a delightful Hypselodoris kanga with orange and blue spots and maroon edged rhinophores and gills. I haven't seen one for years! I saw a large and lovely purple nudi on an orange hydroid. I failed to show it to the rest of the crew while we were in the field, and no excuses seem to earn forgiveness. "But the tide was coming in. But I'm too old to bend. Anyway, I had tons of equipment dangling around my neck. If I bent down something would go 'oops splash'. But..."

Left to right: Hypselodoris kanga, and possibly a Flabellina sp.

More special finds included this teeny tiny Thuridilla, usually only seen by divers. And we saw not one but TWO Ceratosoma tenue. We haven't seen one for a long while.

Left to right: Thuridilla sp. and Ceratosoma tenue.

Darwin is really annoyed by the way we mouth off all the nudis by Latin names. "I must learn to speak nudibranch" he exclaims. At base camp, he starts to read to us off from the guidebooks. We are baffled.

At Pulau Sekudu, we see the usual well camouflaged large nudibranchs. We still don't know what they are.

And two new ones, although we've seen something like the red one before. We also have no idea what these are yet.

Chay Hoon, of course, finds the tiniest little slugs. The one with the filaments was seen in some numbers among the seaweeds on Changi no less! Also clueless as to identity. The little striped ones were all over the hairy green seaweeds on the Southern shores.

Left to right: unindentified slug,
and the striped one is possibly an Armina sp.

Plump, large hairy sea hares (Bursatella leachii) were everywhere on the Northern shores. This pair looked like they were getting ready to make new hairy sea hares!

I'm sure I missed out posting some of the slugs we saw. This will no doubt be indicated in the comments shortly.

Of course we saw lots of other exciting stuff: big fat cushion stars, delicately patterned brittle stars that live on feather stars and soft corals, enormous cowries, giant clams, all kinds of hard corals that are rarely seen elsewhere, and in scary hindsight, an unusual number of stonefishes.

But these don't count unless we see a slug or two...sigh.

Alas, we STILL fail miserably to find the marvellous Melibe which is recorded for Changi.

This enormous nudibranch can reach 30cm in length!!

According to the wonderful book that Wai bought for us from Sabah "Sea Slugs of Western Australia" by Fred E. Wells and Clayton W. Bryce, "They are unusual in having an extremely large oral hood fringed with tentacles which is used to capture small crustaceans. Some species can swim by flexing the body from side to side". In another note in the book "This CONSPICUOUS opisthobranch mollusc of the Indian Ocean has now invaded the Mediterranean Sea".

Why haven't we seen one yet?

Instead, we keep getting these TINY miniscule nudibranchs that can hardly be seen with the naked eye.

I guess we must just keep looking...