Bukit Brown @ night

A much dated post of 2 weeks old.

Then, RY had invited me for a night walk with some other friends to the Bukit Brown Cemetery to look for some creatures of the night.

The flaking bark of the rain tree provide much refuge for many tiny creepy crawlies. Here is a pretty big centipede half hidden by the tree bark.

Another tree was a haven for tiny Tarantulas. This was my first time seeing one, and my… they are really small compared to their counterparts that I often saw on TV.

RY pointed out this scorpion with a clutch of tiny babies clinging on its back. Can you see the many scorpion tails on the mother?

Night jars are a common sight here. I wonder why they like to sit in the middle of the road. To warm their butts perhaps? Since tar roads retain more heat compared to the surrounding forest. heh~

This is really one gross and evil looking spiders.

A dog faced fruit bat munching on a fruit.

A collared scops owl, perching on a branch of Croton. Seemingly common here, as the gang found about four individuals after a round about the cemetery.

Plant walk @ Bukit Brown

Had missed out too many plant walks by NSS as a lot of the former trips are held on Sat mornings when I had to work. Therefore, I was glad that there was one on a Sunday, and it was at a place I have yet to explore: Bukit Brown cemetery.

Dr Shawn Lum and Angie were the guides for the day, and he quickly start off with the news about the development of a 4-lane road that will cut through the main trail of the cemetery. Read the news and map here. Gone will be the plants that they showed us during the walk, together with some tombs, and a lot of wildlife that reside here or flew over occasionally from the Central Catchment Nature Reserve nearby.

Shawn pointed out this twenty men tree, Ixonanthes icosandra. Apparently, from KY, I come to know that the common name arise from someone with a poor sense of humour, as ‘twenty men’ refers to the twenty stamens of its flowers. Get it? =.=’’

We also saw some tall Terentang, Campnosperma auriculata.

HL and I also investigated the tonnes of epiphytes clustering on the rain trees.

Some other nice attractions of the cemetery: pretty girls in tights on horses,

pretty butterflies (This one is called Chestnut Bob),

magnificent tombs,

with stern Sikh guards.

The Asia Paranormal Investigators made all these tags to allow people exploring the area to learn about the origins of the tombs.

The weather was unbearably hot as we trekked through the forest…

To see perhaps the most famous tomb here: Lee Hoon Leong, the grandfather of Lee Kuan Yew.