P. Ubin Bird ID workshop 19/12/2009 Part-2

Chek Jawa exploratory walk, my first time walking on the shores of CJ. Usually i'll be on the boardwalk!

Hm... What's that?  I called Marcus, he said that it's a flatworm! Wow first flatworm that i have seen on CJ  bedford's flatworm Pseudobiceros bedfordi

 Sea Star! A biscuit sea star

 Hermit crab! Striped hermit Crab! Such a beautiful one. Like other hermit crabs, they need a home. SO where do they find their home or shell? They depend on empty shells that are leave beside by dead animals that ones live in.

My Lifer! A Thorny sea cucumber! I wonder if this is the smallest cucumber on our shores? I would say that it's quite common on CJ, a short 2hours walk i can spot about 5 of them.

Garlic bread sea cucumber. Looks like a Garlic bread! haha!

Peacock anemones, not sure of the IDs but their order is Ceriantharia. Look at the colorful anemones! Also quite common, like i said a 2 hours walk i can see more then 15 of them.

 The First fish! Kite butterflyfish Parachaetodon ocellatus

 

After the intertidal walk, we went for a night walk. Saw the Common palm civets! Did not have a clear photo to show you guys as i do not want to FLASH the civets too much. :)

P. Ubin Bird ID workshop 19/12/2009 Part-1

My earliest trip to Ubin! It's always nice to see the sun rise! The first ''event'' was Ron hitting a volunteer with his new toy- The Koker! 

 

Hahaa! After putting our stuff in the volunteer hub we set out for a birding trip with our field omithologist!

The Oriental pied-hornbills (Anthracoceros albirostris) is commonly seen in P. Ubin and chanji village. Do look out for the artificial nest around ubin! There might be a pair of hornbills inside. 

A Grey Heron! There are also some of them with Red Legs, this means that they are breeding. Ubin is the few sites in Singapore that has breeding colony.

 

Someone spotted the common kingfisher, a common  migrant that can be found near water. Also commonly seen at Chinese / Jap garden.  

After birding, it's real work time! A 1hr class on birds!

 

Bukit Batok Nature Park

A stressful trip! But lots of fun and excitement. When I first step in, the calls of the Straw-headed bulbul Pycnonotus zeylanicus fills the air. Then I manage to have a look at it but did not manage to get a good photographs! It’s ok, at least the first hour I got my lifer.

A Slender Squirrel Sundasciurus tenuis  appeared! How cute! Thanks Marcus for the ID!

A huge bee hives! And when there’s bee?!!!

Bee-eater!  Blue-tailed Bee-eater Merops philippinus

When we are going back, we had a camera WAR! Lol. What a waste of shutter counts! Haha!

Then a classical pose!

When I’m going to pack up! The Orange-bellied Flowerpecker Dicaeum trigonostigma appear! What a beautiful bird!

Tanjung Piai National Park

Tanjung Piai National Park - My first trip to Tg. Piai was quite fun!

Before we continue our joney we had a lunch break at _unknown place_.

A pit stop at a petrol station we saw the hawk moth what a beautiful one!

The first animal was a ?blue spotted mud skipper?!

Look at their visitor centre! Hope This is what i can see after the Sungei Buloh Master Plan

Nice lush mangroves

And their boardwalk

 

I find that the hide is useless, suppost to be able to see waders but was heavy covered with trees. Or perharps camouflage?

What's this?

My fav was the mangrove skink! Look at the cute eyes. Looks like there's lots of them over there!

Then to the southern most point!

What's Ron doing? Lolz

Semakau - Hunter seeker!

 Semakau again! I always look forward to going to semakau because of the beautiful reefs! But this time round, not a guided walk but as a hunter seeker. Hunter seeker’s are important to guided walks, they are the ones who finds the animals then put a flag beside the animals.  This ensure that the walk is smooth and not delayed by wasting time finding them.

I do get a bit stressful when I can’t find animals and the group is getting nearer and nearer! 
Here are some animals that we found, I did not take much photos because of the time. :(

Giant clam! One of the worlds larges clam but sadly the are endangered due to over harvesting of them for food!

Hard Corals!

The stone fish sea cucumber Actinopyga lecanora?

Knobbly sea star Protoreaster nodosus! They come in difference colours, from the usual red to blue!

Purple-spotted yellow flatworm Pseudoceros laingensis

Noble volute Cymbiola nobilis Laying eggs!

Some animals aniamls that are not photographs are:

Blue-spotted fantail ray Taeniura lymma

Garlic bread sea cucumber Holothuria scabra

Common sea star Archaster typicus

and more!

The Truth...... or maybe not?

img: http://www.talfryn.net

Sungei Buloh Trip with Leshon - Got a lifer for him and myself!

Orh....Yeh! Saw a estuarine crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) early morning doing his usual basking.

Estuarine crocodile

After taking a few photographs of it, we decided to walk along route one to look for shore birds for Leshon birds collection. Before we reach Hide 1C, we saw about 10 Painted Stork (Mycteria leucocephala), they are free ranging birds from the Zoo and the Bird Park.

 

 

Painted Stork

Here's a comparative photo to show the size of the Painted stork and little egret

A quick walk to Hide IC and only a few birds. Not sure what happen but at least there are a few:

After a while both of us saw a bird that landed on the opposite tree! Oh! It's a Black Baza (Aviceda leuphotes) . But it's too us for us to take photos. Then it flew away, hm...where can it go? I told Leshon to try our luck at Platform 2! WoW! The bird is there and the lighting was much better but not as good for photography.

Another bird! Now a Juv. White-bellied Sea-eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster) caught a fish and the crow is about to fight for it. In the end, the eagle flew away. Maybe the crow was too irriating.

And the last bird of the day: Our old Mr Stocky ( Stork-billed Kingfisher )