On Christmas Day last year, we were half way through our tour of Malaysia’s West coast and spending a few days on the island of Penang. This small island (about 2.5 times smaller than Singapore) is located about 5 hours north of Kuala Lumpur and only around 5km off the coast of Malaysia.
We decided to head down to Batu Ferringi beach (we later discovered that this beach had been hit in the 2004 tsunami killing 80 people!), there’s lots of watersports there and it’s good for sunbathing though the sea is so murky you can’t see your hand in front of your face!
We had been there for about half an hour before we heard some commotion and dozens of people were running to where a huge cloud of black smoke was rising up behind a shop. I grabbed my camera and followed to see what was burning, quickly realising that it was someones house! The building burned for hours and the fire gradually spread to several other buildings close by.
The fire destroyed 2 houses and three guesthouses right in front of us, one of which we had been recommended to stay in! Thankfully no one died and only a couple of people were injured after trying to put it out. It was such a tragedy though for the people whose whole lives were in those buildings, they were left with nothing. My Mum was consoling a woman who owned one of the destroyed houses who told her that the government was purposely burning down buildings owned by people who didn’t want to move, but were in an area where they wanted to build. I hope this isn’t true but I’ll never know for sure.
Hi everyone, just a quick note to update those who are interested about the Veolia Young Photographer of the Year competition that I reached the finals in recently. The finals was all I reached unfortunately, but thanks everyone for the good lucks!
There’s always next time, so hopefully I’ll have some better photos by then!
Also, apologies for not posting anything recently, I haven’t actually done much photography recently but will be doing more soon as I am hoping to get a much better lens for photographing birds!
I’ve reached the finals of the Veolia Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year!
I entered one photo (below) of a bush cricket from Tanah Merah in Singapore.
The winners will be announced next month so I’ll keep you all posted!
Recently I’ve been to several different patches of wilderness dotted around Singapore with my family and with the NPSS but none of the trips were worthy of a whole blog post, so I will bunch them all into this one!
Sungei Buloh is a large area of mudflats and mangroves on the north coast of Singapore. Before settlers, the whole coastline would have been the same, but now there are only a few remaining areas of this unique habitat. It is home to many unusual species of animals including the comical Mudskipper fish which “walk” across the mud and make little pools of water by sucking up the mud and spitting it out to dig their nests and Smooth Otters which play and fish in the river estuary.
I went with my family and we saw the Mudskippers, Otters, Banded Kingfishers, MASSIVE Water Monitors, huge Giant Wood Spiders, Egrets, Little Herons and many other animals.
I didn’t get many photos because of the poor light but I got a few of the monitors and took some video of the Mudskippers.
If you flip it 90 degrees and blur your eyes slightly, it looks like a birds-eye view of a crocodile!
Here’s a video I made of the Mudskippers, sorry for the shaking and missing of the subject, I was attempting to film while handholding a 600mm lens!! The first part you can see how they walk with their modified pectoral fins and then you can see a particularly large one digging a pool out by sucking up the mud and spitting it onto the side!
I was suprised how diverse the range of animals was and I’ll definitely be heading back soon to get some proper photos and video.
Location
- Tanah Merah (Red Land), Singapore Weather Conditions
- Sunny Kit Used
- Camera: Canon EOS 7D + Canon BG-E7
- Lens: Sigma 180mm f/3.5 EX APO IF HSM Macro
My next mini-trip was with the IMOG (Informal Macro Outings Group) and my Grandad who was over visiting with my Grandma. We all met up at the Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal (where my family and I got the ferry to Bintan Island) and then walked to a small patch of woodland right next to it. At first glance it didn’t look like much but I walked through some bushes and was suddenly standing in a really wild forest with waist-high grass in areas and massive tangles of bushes and trees. Singapore had once again defied its urbanisation with another area of wilderness teeming with life.
It looked like a prime Mantis hiding place and sure enough within minutes we’d found a large Praying Mantis (my favourite insect to photograph at the moment) camouflaged against a leaf. Someone then set up a perch and for almost an hour he happily sat there clinging to the branch. Even though I’d spotted it I didn’t get a chance to get any good photos before it leapt into a bush never to be seen again! Luckily however, I found another one which was smaller and more hyper but it was just as awesome looking, so with the help of my friend Peter and by taking it in turns to usher the mantis back into view of the camera, we got a few nice shots making it the highlight of the trip, for me at least!
Other creatures we found included this large bush cricket and tiny one inch long nest of baby Lynx Spiders!
Location
- Kranji and Clementi, Singapore Weather Conditions
- Sunny Kit Used
- Camera: Canon EOS 7D + Canon BG-E7
- Lens: Sigma 180mm f/3.5 EX APO IF HSM Macro
The last two trips, which were also with the IMOG photogaphers, were to a small forested area in Kranji (near Sungei Buloh in the north) and an overgrown area surrounding a disused railway track in Clementi.
I took loads of photos and videos in Kranji, but haven’t had the chance to edit all of them yet, so all I have is this photo and video of large Jumping spider with huge eyes!
I also have a few photos from the Clementi trip still to edit but I did manage to edit this one of the smallest mantis I’ve ever seen! It was amazingly marked and coloured with incredible eyes.
Thanks for reading and I hope you liked my photos and video, please visit my website for more!
A few weeks ago while relaxing in the garden I noticed a rainbow ring around the sun! It was very weird and none of us knew what it was, so I looked it up on wikipedia and here’s their brief description:
A halo (also known as a nimbus, icebow or Gloriole) is an optical phenomenon produced by ice crystals creating colored or white arcs and spots in the sky. Many are near the sun or moon but others are elsewhere and even in the opposite part of the sky. They can also form around artificial lights in very cold weather when ice crystals called diamond dust are floating in the nearby air.
There are many types of ice halos. They are produced by the ice crystals in cirrus clouds high (5–10 km, or 3–6 miles) in the upper troposphere. The particular shape and orientation of the crystals is responsible for the type of halo observed. Light is reflected and refracted by the ice crystals and may split up into colors because of dispersion. The crystals behave like prisms and mirrors, refracting and reflecting sunlight between their faces, sending shafts of light in particular directions.
Apparently they’re pretty rare so it was cool to see one!
I recently had a photo exhibited in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The exhibit theme was water and my water droplet photo was chosen along with several others to be put on display for a couple of months in one of the most visited places in Singapore.
Below is the photo, and some shots of the exhibition, sorry for the poor quality… taken on an iphone in poor light! :)
I also had a few publications last year that I’ve now uploaded to the Wildlight Galleries site, these included a two page spread in Practical Photography, which is the UK’s biggest photography magazine :D
Contents page and two page spread in Practical Photography Magazine
Front cover, and three page spread in Oxford Times Limited Edition Magazine (with possibly the most embarassing photo ever taken of me!)
A page in the Oxford Mail and Abingdon Herald (not shown) newspapers
A three day trip to a dense area of untouched rainforest in Johor, Malaysia. Led by the NPSS, and in the company of many NPSS members, the trip was bound to be very enjoyable right from the start.
Location
- Endau Rompin Nature Reserve and Panti Forest, Johor, Malaysia Weather Conditions
- Mostly overcast with a bit of rain Kit Used
- Camera: Canon EOS 7D + Canon BG-E7
– Lenses: Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 L IS USM, Sigma 180mm f/3.5 EX APO IF HSM, Sigam 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DG HSM – Lens Converters: Canon 2x Teleconverter, Kenko Extension Tubes
– Flash: Canon 430EX II + Flash Extender, Sigma DG EM-140 Ring Flash
– Stability: Giottos 9351B legs, Manfrotto 322RC2 head, Manfrotto 393 Gimball head
The trip started off, as usual, with a very early start. Me and my Dad drove up to Woodlands (an area near the causeway between Singapore and Malaysia) where we met up with the other NPSS members and changed SG dollars into Malaysian ringet at a nearby currency exchanger. We then all set off on the 3 hour or so journey to Endau Rompin nature reserve in north Johor, the southern most territory in Malaysia.
As soon as we drove across the border you could instantly tell you were out of Singapore. All the spotless roads and neatly mowed grass was gone, the buildings looked more run down and there was litter everywhere. It was, however, no more scruffy or neat than the UK or anywhere else I’ve been, it was just normal. Singapore is almost “OCD” when it comes to keeping the country clean and neat, and I was so used to it that I’d forgotten what normal places look like!
The drive was very interesting, everything was new and different to what I’d experienced before. What struck me most of all was the sea of Palm plantations stretching for miles and miles either side of the road. The massive demand for palm oil in the western world has caused millions of miles of land which would once have been primary rainforest to be cleared for palm plantations. It was horrendous to see how much had actually been cleared and it’s not just Malaysia that this has happened. I was told that in Borneo, the best place to see Orang Utans is to take a boat trip on this major river (I can’t remember the name) where you can see them swinging through the trees that border the bank. The forest either side of this river goes back only 400m before you reach palm plantations that go back for miles and miles!
We finally reached the turning off the main road signposted for Endau Rompin and drove for another 40 minutes or so down a winding road which gradually became surrounded by rainforest. We drove past several huge piles of elephant dung which hit home that we were truly in the wilderness out here. There was a board with the major mammals that had been spotted in the area and they included Elephants, Tigers and Leopards!
After arriving at the reserve we unpacked the car and took our stuff into the small bungalow that was to be our home for the next couple of nights. The whole group then walked into the forest to explore a bit. We came across a massive river with signs saying “No Swimming!”, apparently there was a big risk from getting an illness from the water. We all took a few photos before someone spotted a small balled up snake on a branch. It was a baby Reticulated Python, the longest snake in the world, though this one was barely over two feet!
We then found the small building where breakfast, lunch and dinner would be served. Someone else pointed out a gigantic moth which was clinging to the ceiling. It was the biggest moth I’d ever seen with a wingspan of around 20cm! I took a record shot and later identified it as a species of Saturniid Moth, a family which includes the Atlas Moth, the worlds largest moth!
Later on we did some macro photography in the small section of grass and bushes in between the two middle bungalows. There were lots of insects around and I snapped this robberfly and Wandering Glider dragonfly.
The rainforest then lived up to its name with a monsoon of rain that lasted until the evening when it swiftly became dark. Luckily stopped before we went into the forest to the building where they serve dinner armed with torches and cameras in case we spotted some night creatures. I didn’t eat much at dinner so, while I waited for everyone else to finish, I walked around with a torch searching for nocturnal bugs and frogs. I came across this unbelievably small toadlet hopping across the leaf litter. I put my finger near him and he stopped moving allowing me to get some shots. It was pitch black so autofocus was useless and, even with the torch light, manually focusing was hard. I used full flash and a wide aperture to let in as much light as possible. This resulted in a shallow depth of field so I had to take a couple of photos focused on different parts of the toadlet which I then merged in photoshop later on.
We then all headed back to the bungalows to rest. I expected everyone to then go to bed but a night walk had been organised and so we all set up our gear and went on a walk through the forest with just torches to light the way. It was raining slightly and it was pitch black. We found several interesting creatures but the highlights for me were a pair of Huntsman Spiders bigger than the palm of an adult man’s hand! The small bodied one is the male and the fat, greenish one is the female.
We then finally went to bed with a 5:00am start in the morning.
After a short sleep we woke up and packed our gear in the car. The whole group then set off for a small lake we’d spotted nearby on the drive to the reserve the day before. We had the idea of capturing the sunrise over this lake with hopefully some mist. Unfortunately clouds blocked the sunrise and there was only a tiny patch of mist so I didn’t get any decent photos.
There was however a massive waterfall which saved me from too much disappointment. A few of us tackled the long descent over rickety bridges and slippy paths to the base of the waterfall. It was an impressive sight with the waterfall towering above us with the lush forest all around. I took loads of photos using the wide-angle lens and a polarizing filter to cut out reflections and reduce blown-out highlights.
We then walked back up and found a small path through to the top of the waterfall. There was an amazing view over the forest below and the green mountains in the distance. In keeping with tradition, it was here that I had my first animal-attacking experience of the trip. I was happily minding my own business when I noticed a red patch on my trousers just above my ankle. I pulled them up to discover a large black blob attached to my leg! I frantically slapped it off and was greeted by a stream of blood which trickled from the wound. It was, of course, a leech. The anti-coagulant they use to stop the blood from clotting is very strong and it my leg didn’t stop bleeding for over an hour! I was also quite lucky that it didn’t get infected. If you pull a leech off, like I did, it can leave its mouthparts embedded in the skin creating an easy route in for bacteria. The correct way to remove a leech is either by sprinkling salt on it or covering it with mosquito spray at which point it will quickly let go.
Later on I took some more photos in the area between the bungalows and photographed both the biggest Skipper and the biggest Millipede I’d ever seen!
Me, Dad and another member of our group then drove to a stream we’d been told about that was meant to be excellent for damselflies. We donned wellies and mozzy spray before wading up the stream to see what we could find. It lived up to its name and we photographed several different species (all new to me!) including this tiny Red Jewel, colourful Rhinagrion macrocephalum and gold coloured Elattoneura analis (yeah I know, it’s a funny name!!).
Later that day I did one last bit of macro photography before collapsing onto my bed and falling asleep. I photographed a Black-tipped Leafhopper and a crab spider with eyes that looked like they belonged to a teddy bear!
We now had a choice about what to do tomorrow, we could stay at Endau Rompin with most of the members, or head off with a few other members to try and photograph some birds at Panti Forest. Seeing as I’d just done macro photography for the past two days I decided Panti Forest would be the most interesting.
It meant another early morning wake up and we packed up all out stuff from the bungalow and set off with the three other members who were accompanying us to Panti. It was about 1.5 hours from Endau Rompin back towards Singapore and we arrived there around 7:30am. My Sigma 300mm was connecting to the 2x converter so I was having to manual focus which is extremely frustrating, but thankfully I was lent a Canon 300mm f/2.8 L IS USM with a 2x Teleconverter which saved my day. It’s an extremely sharp lens and the image stabilisation was a massive advantage.
Almost as soon as we got there, we heard a Spectacled Spiderhunter and then spotted it in a tree not too far away drinking necter from the tree’s flowers. It hung around for quite some time letting us get lots of photos.
After that we drove down a track and came across several interesting birds and other animals. First off was a beautiful female Great Green Leafbird.
Then I spotted a Gliding Lizard after it “flew” onto a tree and started performing its breeding display which involves flicking out a bright yellow throat pouch in an effort to attract a female.
We then drove on and me and Dad stopped to try and photograph a bulbul while the others drove on. When we’d caught up they were frantically ushering us over while trying to make as little noise as possible. I legged it over to them with my camera and tripod and saw what they were photographing. It was a male and female Red Bearded Bee Eater. This bird is very shy and is rarely seen let alone photographed but here were two perched in the open on the branch of a big tree. I couldn’t believe my luck and kept photographing them until they finally flew off. It was an amazing experience! The male has more purple on his forehead as you can see here.
I then saw another bird which had been on my list since moving to Singapore. It was a Red-crowned Barbet and had stunning plumage, it was very far away though so the quality isn’t the best.
One of our group then spotted yet another rarity, this time a female Banded Kingfisher. He said in his whole life, he’d never photographed one before but this female let us get really close and didn’t seem bothered by us at all! She even caught a praying mantis in front of us!
By this point we were almost in shock at how lucky we’d been but it didn’t stop there. I then spotted another bird on my list, a Chestnut-breasted Malkoha and then we saw a Dusky Broadbill and an Asian Fairy Bluebird though they were all a little too far away for a decent photo.
The final suprise of the day was another rare bird called the Buff-necked Woodpecker. Both a male and female appeared and I photographed both before they flew off.
After several hours at Panti, we had to go home. It was a 2 hour drive home but it felt much longer for some reason. On the way back I saw two Oriental Pied Hornbills perched in a tree which were another first for me.
This was one of the best trips I’ve ever been on! Endau Rompin is an amazing place and the success of Panti was unbelievable, I now have a great love for Malaysia and its wildlife and also a great lust for Canon L series glass.
A 3 day trip to Bintan Island off the coast of Indonesia produced many more creatures than I could ever have imagined! More commonly known for its beautiful resorts and beaches, Bintan is also a haven for wildlife as we discovered.
Location
- Bintan Island, Indonesia Weather Conditions
- Sunny and overcast, dry Kit Used
- Camera: Canon EOS 7D + Canon BG-E7
- Lenses: Canon 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM, Canon 50mm f/1.8 II, Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG
- Lens Converters: Kenko Extension Tubes
- Flash: Canon 430EX II
- Stability: None
Bintan Island is known as a Singapore-influenced holiday resort and is located only a 50 minute high-speed ferry ride from Singapore. It is 3 times bigger in area than Singapore but despite this, it is home to 22 times less people at a population of 200,000. That might give you an idea of how crowded SG is!
We spent three days in Bintan to gather our senses after a hectic, manic and pretty much insane first few months in Singapore. I’d never heard of there being much wildlife in Bintan so I decided to travel light and take a basic camera set-up not including both my main birding lens and my main macro lens, the latter of which turned out to be a big mistake.
After finally getting off the ferry (I hate ferries!), we went through a very relaxed customs. The bag x-ray machine was turned off and they only took a glance at our passports! We then boarded a coach and spent a hair-raising 15 minutes or so tearing down this thin broken up road over bridges with massive drops, round sharp dusty bends and narrowly missing motorcyclists and cars coming the other way!
As the world wizzed by at approximately 267 miles an hour I noticed how untouched the landscape seemed and it started to look like a very good place for photography.
After reaching the resort and realising I’d actually survived, we headed into the lobby and were greeted by a waiter with cups of lemongrass juice, which tasted pretty good! Then we hopped onto our golf buggy (which was to be our form of transport around the resort) and drove to our rooms to drop off the bags before heading down to the beach to relax.
The trip photography-wise started with crabs. Lots of crabs! At low tide we discovered that nearly every small shell had been converted into a home by a hermit crab. It was amazing just how many there were. This was the start of my regret for not bringing my proper kit with me. I had to make do with my Sigma 24-70mm and extension tubes which provided the right level of magnification but created a horrible distortion of the image at certain focal lengths and focus distances which was a massive pain. As a result, I sadly got no decent shots of the hermit crabs so can’t show you any :(
I did however, after the tide came in covering all the hermit crabs, get some shots of other interesting crabs with a different lens.
The first one was a species of crab that I can’t seem to narrow down to more than its genus. It’s a type of shore crab from the Hemigrapsus genus and has a kind of square shell with concave left and right edges. The only one that didn’t leap into the sea at the first hint of danger was pregnant.
Then when walking back up the beach I was confronted by a Ghost Crab that stood up as tall as it could and almost beckoned me forwards with its large pincers as if it were saying “Bring It!”. So I lay on the sand and tried to photograph it. The crab’s confident air then crumbled and it legged it at a speed that can only be described as ridiculously phenominal! I was literally sprinting after it, but luckily it ran out of breath before me, so I ended up photographing probably world’s fastest and most exhausted crab.
At night we went back to the beach to experience the beach at night. We kept seeing shadows moving across the sand and at first thought they might be birds, so we walked down to the surf where most of them seemed to be and we saw them again, speeding across the sand. One appeared from nowhere right in front of us and raised its large arms and stood as tall as it could. They were Ghost Crabs! They burrow into holes in the day and then emerge from them at night to hunt for food, appearing as dark fast-moving shapes on the beach, hence their name Ghost Crabs.
The next day we got up headed out to the beach again. As we left the house I spotted tiny pencil-thin snake resting in a bush. It had a beautiful copper back and massive eyes! I got loads of shots and we later identified it as a baby Common Bronzeback.
We spent most of the day at the beach and after a while I got bored of just sitting so I went off to see what animals I could find. I soon came across a bush which seemed to house its own ecosystem! I’ve never seen a bush with so many insects and spiders in it before. Ants (massive ones) were crawling across every branch, bees and wasps were on every flower and there were even two large Changeable Lizards courting in the branches at the bottom. I got a few photos of them and managed to get attacked by one of the huge ants which first bit me then stung into the wound, why is that I always seem to get attacked by something… I just hope they don’t get any bigger!
The attacking annoyingly didn’t stop there. I decided to go for a swim in the sea which was really warm but quite murky, and after a few minutes and got stung by something, while swimming! I then got several more of these stings and so swiftly got out of the sea. The stings then burned for a few minutes (possibly aggravated by the salt in seawater) before going as if nothing had happened. It was very weird and pretty unnerving because you can’t exactly see what it is beneath the surface. I later found out after looking it up on Google that it’s caused by the stinging cells that had been washed off of a jellyfish by rough seas during a storm or strong winds, so I was effectively getting a very minor jellyfish sting!
Anyway, I went back to photography after that and found this female Carpenter Bee who was aggressively defending her patch of the very popular bush I mentioned earlier. She kept flying around the bush and then hovering in the same place each time allowing me to get some in-flight shots.
The next day was quite manic with all the packing and taking bags up to the lobby on the golf carts, we then did some jet-skiing and before we knew it was time to head up to the lobby and get on the coach to the dock. After an even more horrific coach drive than before, we reached the dock, went through customs and got on the ferry for home.
It was a very good trip in the end both for photography and relaxing. I did some reading up on Bintan when I got home and discovered that, though the bit of Bintan that we saw looked pretty much untouched, the island has in-fact nearly all been deforested! So despite the lack of forest, Bintan like Singapore, still manages to be a home to a massive variety of wildlife… just imagine it before settlers, it must have been bursting with life!
Shortly after moving to Singapore, I became a member of the Nature Photographic Society Singapore (NPSS). This is a great community of photographers who hold many meetings, exhibitions and talks. A break-off group from the NPSS called the Informal Macro Outing Group (IMOG) organize lots of meets to new areas in Singapore and I tagged along on their trip to a spot nicknamed the “Wild Wild West”.
It was an early start which involved setting my alarm for 6:30am (I can barely get up for tutoring at 7:30!). Dragging myself out of bed I got ready packed my stuff, including lots of mosquito repellant! For the first time since living in SG, I donned trousers, socks and trainers. Even though it was 30C and extremely humid I wasn’t about to get eaten by some fanged grass-dwelling bug!!
After getting lost a few times (Singapore is a maize of roads with pretty poor signposting!) we finally met up with the other IMOG photographers. We then headed off to the macro spot
Wild Wild West is basically a patch of very long grass with a stream running down the middle and it is a haven for insects like dragonflies, damselflies and grasshoppers as we discovered.
The early morning dew drenched my trousers, socks and shoes but was very photogenic especially with an insect in the frame as well.
Here a tiny red cricket nymph (of unknown species) is perched on a grass stem. I often think how awesome it would be to be that small and see dew drops the size of your head!
We photographed lots of insects and spiders on the dewy foliage including cockroaches (not the nasty house vermin type, these were actually quite good looking bugs!), lots of leafhoppers and grasshoppers, dragonflies and Lynx spiders.
The sun then finally burst through the cloud lining the horizon. Fortunately this happened just as the wind picked up, so the moving plants didn’t cause to much of a problem now that we were now able to get higher shutter speeds. It’s rare but very welcome when Mother Nature actually helps you out!
Once the sun came out, so did the butterflies. There were many species of Skippers and some were making more Skippers!
I was then bitten by an ant. This was my first experience of the aggressive little buggers that you get here in Singapore. Some of the ants here grow to over an inch and look horrendously scary but it is in fact the tiniest ants which are most likely and willing to bite! They are smaller than the common Black Ant back in the UK (which I’ve never ever known to bite people) but can give a really nasty bite for their size, comparable to the sting of a Red Ant, the only difference being that these things are EVERYWHERE and will attack for no reason whatsoever! They’re very quick to make the most of an advantageuos situation as well. I came home from a trip out the other day to find a whole colony of them in my room, which were swiftly hoovered up and set free in the garden.
Anyway this tiny, brave ant bit into my arm and my first thought was “wasp!” but when I looked all I could see was this ant biting me as if its life depended on it… which it did. Because he’d bitten me. Silly ant.
There were lots of butterflies fluttering around looking for breakfast, but most didn’t land for long. This Chocolate Pansy however was very friendly!
The highlight of the trip for me was a giant, green Praying Mantis. It was the biggest I’d ever seen at over 4 inches in length. Sadly it flew off before I could get any photos so I’ll just have to remember it!
Another amazing insect I found was a very long green grasshopper called Atractomorpha crenulata. It had a really long face and funny staring eyes.
I think he was a bit shy ;)
Just before packing up we found a large locust which had just shed its skin and was still drying its wings.
We then packed up and several of us headed off to a nearby hawker centre to relieve our hunger. A big thanks to the IMOG organizers for setting up the meet which was very enjoyable.
For my first wildlife trip in Singapore, I decided to explore the Botanic Gardens (SBG). It is a manicured and very popular garden in the southern half of Singapore, but it is well known for its abundant wildlife so seemed a good place to start.
Walking through the gardens you can still see some original trees from when it would have been dense rainforest. It’s unbelievable how much forest has been cleared in Singapore (around 97%!) so hopefully the 3% of forest left will be preserved!
The trip was predominantly for macro photography, there are birds there but there are also lots of people and so it’s rare to be able to find a bird which doesn’t then get scared off! Despite this I still took my birding lens, even though I would probably regret taking the extra weight, I don’t like to limit my options.
I started off from the wrong end of the gardens. There was no dense foliage for about 200m and I saw one Cicada high up in a tree and one butterfly… a bit disheartening!
However I soon reached the central area of the gardens which had many more plants and trees and I started to find lots more critters. One in particular caught my eye and the eyes of many other passersby, to their horror. It was a Giant Wood Spider (Nephila maculata) with a legspan of around 5 inches! It had built a massive web spanning from a tree trunk to 2m high branch to the ground. This thing could capture a small child, maybe. The web was a big nuisance to me trying to get a sharp photo of the spider. It acted as windbreak moving the spider all over the place even in a barely detectable breeze. Flash was out of the question as the spider, like many invertebrates, reflected it back in a really unattractive way, rendering it all glossy and actually darker than normal! So I sat there with my camera on a tripod for over half an hour before the wind finally stopped for a few seconds. I think I got about two sharp photos overall!
I then found a large patch of the original rainforest that had been spared by the timber-hungry settlers. There was a walkway right through the middle with trees and foliage all around so there were lots of potential bug hiding places. Light in rainforests is generally very poor as all the trees struggle for light and block all the gaps in the canopy stopping nearly all the sunlight reaching the forest floor. This makes a tripod or flash essential for sharp images but even this will be useless if there’s even the slightest bit of wind which there nearly always is wherever you are. One of the most frustrating things for me is walking in to a forest ready for some macro photography and seeing every plant moving in the wind! The only way to get a sharp photo in this circumstance is to use flash (a last resort) or if the subject is on something solid that doesn’t move, like a tree or fence, which is exactly what happened to me. There was a slight breeze moving every branch and leaf so I turned my attention to the trees. I was lucky enough to find something that I’d been fascinated (and horrified) by since seeing it on the TV a few years back. Basically it was a deceased Cicada covered in a white fluffy looking fungus! Not the most interesting of things apart from the unusual cause of its demise. Back in life, this little Cicada would have been happily trilling away not knowing that the spore of a deadly entomopathogenic fungus had attached itself onto the Cicada’s body. The spore would have then germinated and spread gradually burrowing through the outer casing and into the body causing a slow death to the poor Cicada. It would then form new spores in or out of the insect’s body and release them into the air. Not a nice way to die!
Here’s a shot of it taken using my 180mm lens, a tripod and flash.
After seeing the dead Cicada I found a live one! It was clinging to a tree trunk in a perfect position and I quickly set up my tripod to try and get a shot before it flew off. In my rush and I got my hand trapped one of the moving parts of my tripod head… the lens and camera together are quite a weight and it squeezed on the bit of skin between my thumb and index finger with quite a bit of force. Thinking nothing of it (apart for quite a bit of pain!) I got my tripod set up and was just about to take a shot when I realised I was bleeding all over my camera! It was a bit of a shock but mostly frustrating because I had to walk for about 10 minutes to a toilet to get my hand sorted, leaving the Cicada behind! This was my first ever good opportunity to photograph this insect so I was really annoyed, but hoping it would still be there, I went back after cleaning my hand. Amazingly it hadn’t moved one bit! Massively happy, I took loads of shots and there was a small crowd around me at one point intrigued at what was so amazing. They soon walked off after discovering that it was only a Cicada!
Being 17 I am always hungry, so I finally ran out of energy and had to go and get some food, so I set off. Near the exit I found another Cicada in an even better position. I was shaking with hunger by this point but it was too good an opportunity to miss. I got several shots of it drilling into the wood for a meal before some kid scared it off!
It was an excellent trip in the end and I’ll definitely be going back to the Botanic Gardens again soon to see what else I can find.
