I was back in Pulau Semakau again for a continuation of the plant survey for Project Semakau. It was quite a satisfying trip with a few new sightings of plants not found in the last 2 surveys. But, the highlight of the trip was probably of this mud lobster, Thalassina sp. on the sandy shore.
The upper portion of its claw is much elongated, probably used for digging.
It retreated to a hole made by a ghost crab soon after.
Was at Pearl’s Hill City Park today and was amazed to see a family of White Breasted Waterhens crossing the road. 2 parents and 3 black furry chicks! How adorable~
Unfortunately, it took me awhile to get out my camera, on it, zoom and focus (now I can truly appreciate having an SLR), but they ran off into the undergrowth. Luckily I saw one parent and a chick wandering about later and managed to catch a lousy picture.
Here are some pictures of the devastation bought by the storms in Mandai forest earlier this year in February. Tony gave a good description about this incident in his website.
Tree falls
with young saplings.
Look at the amount of staghorn ferns on this tree fall!
More tree falls~
Probably some seeds passed out by a civet cat.
We saw quite a few bat lilies flowering.
A saw this web like thing with caterpillars on it. Initially we thought that they were trapped in a spider web.
But later we realised that they can actually move freely in the web. Apparently, Horace said that these are moth caterpillars living in a communal web made by themselves.
