Feather Star at Changi

I went to Changi Beach on Tuesday, and as the lowest tide was at 5am in the morning, and I had to wake up really early and took a cab there. But well, I've to say it's all worth it, because I found a feather star!!!


And why was I so excited about it? It's because... This was my first time seeing a feather star on our mainland shores! Before this, I had only seen them on our offshore islands. (Afternote: Even more surprisingly, my second encounter with feather stars on our mainland shores was at East Coast on Wednesday, which was the following day.)

Anyway, am really busy these few days, so will just do a quick listing of some of the other interesting things I saw that day.


This is probably a cake sea star. I saw about 4 of them that day.


Wonder if this is a cake sea star too. The arms appeared to be thinner though.


There were lots of sandstars. These critters feed on little snails like the button shells.


Here's another sand star. We have been seeing a lot of the above two types of sand stars which had different colourations, but we've no idea if they are variations of the same species or two different species.


This is probably a biscuit sea star.


There were also several brittlestars.


I was rather glad to find many ball sea cucumbers.


The little black sea urchins appeared to be in season too.


Stuck on the seagrasses and seaweeds were many swimming anemones.


Note sure if the bigger carpet anemones were poached, as I could only find the smaller ones.


This type of jellyfish still appear to be in season. Been seeing them on our various shores.


Found this interesting group of horseshoe worms. I usually found them living near peacock anemones, and this was the first time I saw so many of them together and no where near a peacock anemone.


There were lots of hairy sea hares too.


This is a geographic sea hare. You can see its internal shell in the middle.


Egg capsules of the sea hare were every where.


As I was taking the photo of a sea hare, this little fellow just emerged from the sand next to the sea hare. It's an armina nudibranch! So cute! These nudis supposedly feed on sea pens.

Just imagine, I only had about an hour or so to explore, and I already found so many things. That just shows how rich our shores are.

Went to East Coast, St John's Island, and another part of Changi Beach over the past few days. Hopefully I can find time next week to post some quick entries... :P

A Trip to Sedili

Went to Sedili, Johor, recently with a few nature volunteer kakis.

It was certainly a good break for me, as I was really busy with work for the past few days. Sedili was of course a very beautiful place, with a lovely rocky shore and lot's of natural sights in the surrounding.


This was the hut that JL, SJ and I shared during out stay in Sedili.


JH, CH, LK, HW and Prof T stayed in smaller huts like the ones above.


Some of the huts were built on the edge of a very beautiful pond with lots of water lilies.


Right next to our resort was a long stretch of spectacular rocky shore with majestic cliffs.


We spotted this pair of flying lizards on our way to the rocky shore.


And here's the pretty rocky shore upclose!


While taking a walk among the mangrove trees on the rocky shore, we found several insects on a leaf. Looked like ants to me, but I'd never seen ants in such colours before, so I'm not really sure. Below the insects on the leaf surface were white-coloured stuff which looked like eggs. Not sure if they were guarding the eggs, laying eggs, or eating the eggs.


We found the shell of a turtle as well. It was still stinking really badly, so we thought it probably died just not too long ago.


Several periwinkles were trying to minimise their contact with the baking-hot rocks.


The resort was facing the South China Sea, and we were treated to a beautiful sun rise in the morning.


The resort also had a pool, but unfortunately we found several dead insects inside. Here's a rhino beetle we saved using a broom stick from the pool.


We also took a walk to a freshwater swamp forest, and found several pretty forest dragonflies.


We also found a few damselflies by the various streams.


The swamp forest slowly become a coastal hill forest as we climbed higher, and eventually reach a lovely patch of lallang on a hill.


In the coastal forest, we found several trees with mistletoes growing on them.


There were lots of young tongkat ali trees in the coastal forest.


We also found a patch with several Raffles pitcher plants.


We also managed to take a look at the sandy shore, and found many beach tacca there. Somehow, they reminded me of ostriches.


We also visited the mangrove area, which has lots of interesting mangrove trees and cute little blue spotted mudskippers.


On our last day there, we went down to the rocky shore again, and found several blue striped hermit crabs! Have seen them in Ubin and Semakau, but never took any photos. Finally, I remembered to take a few photos this time round.

Am really glad that I went for this trip. It was a nice and quiet place with a great view, and of course, the company was great too :P