Treading on a Sensory Trail

The Naked Hermit Crabs brought a group of scouts to the Chek Jawa Boardwalk today. As I'm waiting for some of the participants to send me the photos to blog on the NHC blog, thought I'll blog about the Sensory Trail first :)

Chay Hoon and I decided to walk over to the Sensory Trail to take a look after the guided walk. Due to my commitments in other nature volunteer work, I haven't guided at Sensory Trail for a while (pai seh, Adelle) and kind of miss it.

The trail was originally designed for the visually-handicapped to experience nature through various other senses. Plants along this trail can either be touched, smelled or tasted.



As we were heading towards the trail, I noticed that the fig tree near the Ubin Visitor Centre was figging like nobody's business. Figs are very interesting plants, as their flowers are concealed within the fig! So it is actually wrong to say that they do not flower, because they do!



On a coconut tree near the coastal police station, a lovely wild orchid was blooming.



I always like to take photos of banana plants, as they display such a refreshing shade of green. Mind you, banana plants are not trees, since they do not have a tree trunk. The so-called "trunk" is actually made from leaves stack upon one another.



I was really excited to so many fruits on the mulberry bush.



Some of the fruits are so ripe that they look black in colour, though if you squeeze out the juice you will realised it's just a very dark red.

And I ended up happily popping the ripe ones into my mouth. Really reminded me of my kampong days.

Chay Hoon told me later that she'd seen worms in one of the really ripe ones before. I wonder if that's why some of the mulberries tasted especially juicy...

There were lots of cute little insects along the Sensory Trail too.



Here's a little bug on a mulberry leaf.



On a blooming hibiscus, there were several mating insects. Have no idea what they are though :P



The flower of the toothache plant, which was sometimes chewed by people to relief toothaches, also has a little fly on it. Again, have no idea what species it is. Actually, I only saw this tiny fly just now when I was processing my photos. Didn't notice it when I took the photo :P



There were also a few grasshoppers on the Lady's finger plants.



This one seems to be saying - Don't mess around with me!



We also found a lonely caterpillar on a leaf. Where are its siblings, I wonder?



On the Job's tears plant, there was an insect which I thought looked like a cricket, or perhaps its close relative. Not sure if I'm right though, since I'm no insect experts.



As I was on my way out, I suddenly noticed this strange looking insect on a mulberry leaf. Is it some kind of moth? I really have no idea.



One of the greatest pleasure of using my compact pentax camera was the macro - it was simply fantastic once you get the hang of it! Have to say that while sometimes you may experience problem focusing when the subject is too small or when it is too dark, the results were just amazing when you got it right!



Apart from the little insects, I also saw a much bigger monitor lizard, or rather, it saw me first and started dashing across the path.

Why did the monitor lizard cross the road?

Hmm...