Woodlands Waterfront

Today, after the biodiversity race 2010 organised by NParks, Mel decided to check out Woodlands Waterfront, where part of it was opened to the public.

Some mangrove/coastal plants were not removed from the sea side, and it saved the place from looking overly manicured. Unfortunately, it consists of just mainly Sea Hibiscus, Sea Almond, Buta-Buta and Noni Plant.

One thing about this waterfront is that it is spacious…

There is a playground for the young and old but with a young heart.

We climbed up the spider web structure and took a view of the undeveloped side of the waterfront.

I must say that it was slightly frightening to walk through the shaky bridge but the kids have totally no problem.

And down we came from the other end of the bridge.

 
Another highlight is the bridge extension which stretches far out from the coast. Johor Baru looks like it was just a few hundred metres away!

Nice place to hang out I must say. Looking forward to the entire waterfront to be completed.

Baby swallows in NUS

The swallows at DBS have new babies again! I have been watching out for them every since they started to build a new nest near their old fallen ones. However I can’t be sure whether the parents are the same birds as last time.

 
A pity that I only notice them when they fledged. Perhaps when they were younger, they probably can’t poke their heads out of the nest to beg for food. Hopefully they are still there next week for me to bring a better camera to snap nicer shots~

Corgi is cute

Just some random post.

Saw this corgi dog this morning. Isn’t it adorable? It was barking at us but because it looked so cute, it didn’t frighten us at all. As SM who owned a corgi said, nobody takes it seriously because of its appearance. lol

Ant predation on fig wasps

Today I accompanied CJ and KY to collect some figs for a study. Coming across another new fig species for me, Ficus benghalensis, we took a closer look at its bright orange figs.

 
There were lots of ants but I initially took little notice of them. But as more and more ants crawled around the fig, it dawned to me that the ants were emerging from the ostiole of the fig. CK said that they are probably predatory ants that feed on the fig wasps.

And indeed, I found one ant carrying a winged fig wasp (centre of the picture), a female, since the male fig wasps do not have wings. I also remembered reading from somewhere that male fig wasps, besides chewing a tunnel out of the fig, also act as sacrificial lambs to ants by emerging out first so as to protect their mates. Apparently it didn’t really work in this case since the opening of the figs are so big that the ants can freely walk in and out of them.