Sungei Buloh on 5 Feb 2009

This was my 3rd trip with students from PLMGS at Sungei Buloh. It was a rather cloudy day, and for a while, it actually looked like it would rain. Fortunately, the weather managed to hold, and we had a pleasant and cooling walk.


Before the students arrived, I was there looking at the berembang (Sonneratia caseolaris) again. It has a pretty reddish flower bud! Looked like it would probably start blooming either tonight or the following night!


My students soon arrived.


And again, one of the first few animals we encountered was the Malayan water monitor (Varanus salvator).


The bakau putih (Bruguiera cylindrica) is one of the most common mangrove trees in Sungei Buloh. I was really fortunate to spot this pair of twin seedlings. My first time seeing this too! I wonder what will happen if this pair of seedlings successfully get dispersed and grow into trees!

To deal with the harsh environment in mangroves, many mangrove plants have adapted to prepare their young as much as possible, and some like the bakau putih germinate while they are still attached to their parents! When the seedling eventually dropped into the water, they will first float horizontally. After soaking in sea water for a few weeks, they will eventually be bloated with water and start floating vertically, allowing them to sink into the mud as the tide goes down.


A common back mangrove plant found in the reserve is the sea hibiscus (Talipariti tiliaceum). The flowers of this tree blooms in the morning in yellow, but the colour darkens towards the end of the day, and eventually became orange in the evening. It will wither and drop by the following day.


As we were looking at the sea hibiscus, a cackling laughter was heard. It was a collared kingfisher (Todiramphus chloris). We even saw it darting into the water to hunt for fish! Apart from small fishes, it feeds on small crabs, shrimps and insects too.


As we headed onto the mangrove boardwalk, we saw this huge bird's nest fern (Asplenium nidus). The way the leaves are arranged allow it to trap leaf litter, and when the latter decomposes, the fern will be able to absorb the nutrients.


I was rather glad to see that the nipah palm (Nypa fruticans) was still fruiting so that I could show the students where their attap chee came from. When I was a kid, I used to live in an attap house, and the roof was made from nipah palm leaves. Nipah palm is also called attap palm locally.


The various aerial roots of the different types of mangrove plants were always an interesting sight. The ones above belonged to the api-api (Avicennia spp.). These pencil thin roots allow the api-api to breath atmospheric air, because the mangrove mud has very little oxygen to offer the plants growing on it.


The cone-shaped roots belonged to the mangrove apple trees (Sonneratia spp.). You may also noticed that the mangrove tree roots usually spread over a wide area. That is because the ground in the mangroves is usually very soft and unstable. Spreading the roots over a wide area will give the plant more stability.


Meanwhile, the bakau trees (Rhizophora spp.) have prop or stilt roots. The trees are sometimes grown in mangrove plantations to be processed into high quality charcoal.


While the roots were interesting, they were certainly not as colourful as the flowers. These bright red flowers belonged to a tumu tree (Bruguiera gymnorhiza). I am certainly looking forward to see their seedlings in the near future.


Mangroves are very important because they supports a huge variety of organisms, including many interesting animals. One of the most easily spotted one is the giant mudskipper (Periophthalmodon schlosseri) above. Being the biggest muskipper in Singapore, they are also rather aggressive, and we sometimes see them fighting with each other for territories or mate.


The tree-climbing crab (Episesarma sp.) is another commonly spotted animal. They are also called vinegar crabs because some people pickle them in vinegar and eat them with porridge.


A few of the students who followed me more closely also got to see this white-breasted waterhen (Amaurornis phoenicurus). This bird normally feed on small fishes, worms, snails, insects and seeds by foraging at the water's edge, on the ground and in small bushes.


Just before we left, I spotted this little jumping spider (Family Salticidae), which can jump from place to place up, with some species said to be able to jump up to 80 times the body length. It also has excellent vision, and studies shown it has four different kinds of receptor cells in its eyes with different absorption spectra, and it is possible that it can even see ultra-violet light!

We eventually ended the trip with a video clip on Sungei Buloh. I certainly hope that the students have learned something useful today, and will appreciate our mangroves more in future :)

Exploring Pulau Ubin with RMBR Volunteers

This is the first Sunday after the Lunar New Year, and so we decided to have a gathering for RMBR volunteers to Pulau Ubin. Apart from enjoying the company of my fellow nature-loving friends, I was also hoping to find the Bruguiera parviflora which I didn't have the time to find during my last trip there. But alas! We took a long time to reach Noordin Beach, stopping to take photos of the many interesting stuff we encounter along the way, and thus I didn't have time to fully explore the area again! Still, this was a very worthwhile trip, because as usual, Pulau Ubin was packed with little surprises here and there!


First of all, many of the seashore nutmegs (Knema globularia) were fruiting! At one time, it was thought that this coastal plant was extinct in Singapore, until they found many of them on Pulau Ubin! The bright red fruits attract birds like the oriental pied-hornbills to eat and disperse the seeds.


So were the rotan tikus (Flagellaria indica)! This vine was used to make baskets in some places, but the quality is supposedly not as good as rattan. Interestingly, the young stems and leaves are sometimes used as shampoo to combat baldness! Hmm...


The nyireh batu (Xylocarpus moluccensis), unfortunately, wasn't fruiting though.


The chengam (Scyphiphora hydrophyllacea) is very common on Pulau Ubin. It was said that the capital city of the Philippines, Manila, got its name from this plant. Known as nilad in the Philippines, the plant grew in huge numbers on the shores of Manila Bay, and thus the place was called "Maynilad", which means "There is nilad".


The teruntum bunga puteh (Lumnitzera racemosa) were blooming with pretty little white flowers, and some of them were also fruiting.


Several bakau kurap (Rhizophora mucronata) were spotted with their hypocotyls dangling off the branches. The long hypocotyl can grow to more than 60cm, and in some places, parents actually use them to cane their children instead of using rattan canes!


Several tumu trees (Bruguiera gymnorhiza) were also flaunting their cigar-like hypocotyls.


Unfortunately, the berus mata buaya (Bruguiera hainesii) we spotted during our last trip wasn't fruiting though. It had lots of flowers, but was too far and dark for my camera to take any decent photos, so I decided to take a photo of its trunk instead, because berus mata buaya in Malay means crocodile eyes, referring to the large lenticels on the bark.


However, we have another surprise - it seemed like Nparks had planted a few Bruguiera sexangula on Pulau Ubin, and they are flowering! I can't wait to go back in a few weeks time to check out if the seedlings develop.


Other than plants, many animals were encountered during our exploration. The most obvious ones must be the golden web spiders (Nephila pilipes), since they make such huge webs! Again, I spotted one that has a totally black body, said to be a variation of this species.


And most of the time, on the web of the golden web spiders, you can find these little red parasitic spiders (probably Argyrodes sp.). Being a kleptoparasite, the little spiders feed off the prey of the bigger spider whose web they live on.


But not all the little red spiders are the parasitic spiders. The one above on the back of the huge female golden web spider is actually a male golden web spider, and its so much smaller than the female!


A little bagworm moth which built its home by cutting branches off the plant it lived on, and pasting them on its body, forming a nice spiral.


The knight (Lebadea martha malayana) is a slow flier, making it rather easy for us follow it to take a few nice photos. Its caterpillar feeds on ixora congesta, a native ixora of Singapore that grew in abundance on Pulau Ubin. 3 sub-species of Lebadea martha have been recorded in Singapore, with the parkeri sub-species being more regularly spotted on mainland Singapore. The latter has pale mauve markings on its hindwing, instead of the reddish brown background found on the malayana sub-species.


A colony of stingless bees have built a nest on the gate to Chek Jawa.


We were rather amazed to see so many cotton stainer bugs (Dysdercus decussatus) on these leaves. These bugs feed on the seeds of the sea hibiscus (Talipariti tiliaceum), and they usually gather in huge numbers to make it easier for them to find mates.


A closely related species, but much rarer in Singapore, was the Thespesia firebug (Dysdercus simon), which we found 3 on a portia tree (Thespesia populnea). They can be differentiated from the cotton stainer bug by the black head.


On looking closely at some of the Thespesia firebug, I noticed an "imposter", a cotton stainer bug on the right above.


A longhorn beetle was also found feeding on the leaves of the portia tree.


There was this gold-spotted mudskipper (Periophthalmus chrysospilos) on one of the prop roots of a bakau tree (Rhizophora sp.). Despite the splashing wave, it still managed to hold tightly to the root! That is because its pelvic fins are fused to form something like a sucker which allows it to cling tightly to any hard surfaces.


The giant mudskipper (Periophthalmodon schlosseri) is often spotted at the back mangroves of Pulau Ubin, and today we spotted several of them. This is the biggest mudskipper in Singapore, and in some places they are eaten as a delicacy.


We saw 2 green crested lizards (Bronchocela cristatella), and here's one of them. This is a native lizard, but are now less commonly encountered as they were out-competed by the introduced changeable lizard - a very real example of how introduced species can affect our ecosystem, and drastically affect the population of our native species.


We were rather fortunate to see this white-rumped Shama (Copsychus malabaricus), a rather rare native bird with a lovely voice. Unfortunately, this bird was often trapped by poachers for sale at the songbird market, and in fact, we bumped into some of the poachers today!

It's really unfortunate that we have so little nature spots left in Singapore, but yet there are various groups of people who don't seem to care much about preserving them.

Well, while that dampened our mood a little, the various interesting sightings still made this trip a really worthwhile one, even though I was having a flu and was really tired after the 8-hour trip. Haha.