Otters and Other Animals at Sungei Buloh on 2 Sep 2011

It's been a long while since I had a good walk at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, and hence I decided to pay it a visit with Peiting last Saturday.


We decided to head to the main bridge first, and I was glad we made this decision as a pair of Smooth Otters (Lutrogale perspicillata) in the river! The tide was rather low, and hence the otters had no problem catching the fish that they love to eat.


After the meal, they headed back to shore.


One of them got onto the river bank and started rolling on the black sand, probably to dry itself.


The other soon it, and both otters spent about 5 min rolling before they moved up the river bank.


They rested for a while by the freshwater pond, before heading back into the river.


There were several Plantain Squirrels (Callosciurus notatus) among the trees, and this one was feeding on a Sea Almond (Terminalia catappa) fruit.


We saw a lot of jumping fish in the disused prawn ponds. Still not exactly sure why they were doing that - but I would think it's not likely to be due to predators in the water, as these fish were quite huge.


We only saw a few migratory birds - suspect they have properly flown out of the reserve to nearby mudflats since the tide was low. Managed to catch a shot of these Little Egrets (Egretta garzetta) in flight though.


Peiting was commenting that she hadn't seen the Oriental Pied-hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris) at Sungei Buloh, and not too long later, we saw a pair of them on a figging Ficus superba!


They were feeding on the figs, but did not appear to be too successful as this male one kept dropping the figs it was handling.


At the river, we also saw this Stork-billed Kingfisher (Pelargopsis capensis) catching a fish!

Just as we were leaving the reserve, we encountered two fighting Malayan Water Monitors (Varanus salvator). The one on the right (back-facing) eventually lost and ran away. But what a fight they had! Lots of twisting, grabbing, wrestling, splashing, clawing... as a smaller female watched nearby...

CCNR on an Early Evening (2 Sep 2011)

Decided to check out the fringes of the Central Catchment Nature Reserve (CCNR) with Kok Sheng in the early evening. There was a huge bunch of photographers ahead of us, and we had thought that the noise they made would have driven all the animals away. Surprisingly though, we still spotted quite a number of stuff!


Possibly less than 50m away from where I started, I spotted a Lesser Mouse Deer (Tragulus kanchil) resting among the undergrowth - and to think that the noisy bunch of photographers was less than 50m away from me!


It stood up after a while...


And started licking some of the nearby leaves. Not sure what it was trying to, since it did not munch on any of the leaves, but just licked.


We saw a total of 4 Lesser Mouse Deers - two of them were together!


And right above our heads when I spotted the first mouse deer, there was a Horsfield's Flying Squirrel (Iomys horsfieldi)!


Later, 2 more appeared! Here's another one!


They were just chasing each other on the tree (there were two of them above) - not sure if it's some kind of courtship behaviour?


There were the usual Malayan Colugos (Cynocephalus variegatus), which we saw 4 of them.

It's amazing that despite our forest being so fragmented, there're still many interesting wild life living in them.

Unfortunately, I have encountered several poachers in our forest as well - for their own selfish reasons, they trap and remove these wonderful wildlife from our forest, and it's no wonder that many of our native mammals are now rare and endangered. If you see any poachers in our forest, do contact the National Parks Board, so that they can take the necessary actions against them!