Sunday 15 January 2012

Pulau Ubin - part 2

Of course we didn't only see birds on the island yesterday.
Some neat things include these Shield bugs covering several leaves:

Several gliding lizards:

They fan out their skin to form pseudo-wings to glide from branch to branch:
Photo from here

If you look closely you can see a stream of ants walking. I saw several 'trails' like this where the ants would walk (in both directions) but in congested areas as if there was a road! I'm not sure why they do this but it's definitely cool!

Pond - interestingly I haven't seen any ducks, geese or gulls whatsoever in Singapore - they're pretty rare for the most part:

I posted a photo of this species last week but I've since learned more about them. This is the female. It can grow to be over 2 inches long (this one is about 2 inches long) and is big enough to eat a Sunbird (a very small bird barely larger than a Hummingbird):

And this is the male - tiny in comparison to the female:

A decent find by our group was this Cuckoo - the local birders identified it as a Hodgson's Hawk-Cuckoo for now but it's difficult to distinguish from the Malaysian Hawk-Cuckoo:

And as I mentioned I saw the Mangrove Pitta yesterday. At first it was hidden behind a tree but eventually it came right out into the open much to the satisfaction of the paparazzi (can they ever be satisfied?):

Striated/Little Heron:

Drongo Cuckoo:




Check out the paparazzi in Ontario.