Sungei Serangoon #2

Today went to the other side of Sungei Serangoon. Saw the usual suspects, little and great egrets, black-naped orioles, yellow-vented bulbuls and quite a few white-breasted waterhens which ran quickly into the bushes when they saw me. Of cos, I guessed they were more birds in the vicinity but I was too amateurish to identify anything. =p

looking at the gentle water current always seems so relaxing to me

Nursery of tiny fishes

The river was soon blocked by the trees so there wasn't much to see. I soon reached Sengkang, where the familiar fishing spot where Mervyn showed me last time was under some construction, a road I think, to connect to the opposite bank.

There was this photographer taking pictures of birds using his gigantic camera. For me, I couldn’t possibly do that using my own tiny camera. Instead, I climbed down the sloping riprap to see if theres any stuff to observe. That’s when I saw this lovely sight.

Scooping motions of the barnacles feathery legs to filter feed. Heres another video I took showing more clearly the scooping but more blurry.

Closed "mouth" of the barnacles

Barnacles filter feeding! This is the first time I saw this. Still remembered our TA Ngan Kee told us the comical way they filter feed. Indeed, it was quite cute. Barnacles belonged to the phylum arthropods and sub-phylum Crusteceans. Thus they are more closely related to shrimps rather than the common misconception that they are bivalves of phylum Mollusks. Some more facts from wildsingapore, Chek Jawa guide. The larvae are shrimp-like and able to swim freely till they found a spot to attach themselves head down to a hard surface and develop a hard shell over it. They are usually hermaphrodites but they do not self-fertilize. Instead they have a tremendously long penis to reach and fertilize neighboring barnacles.