The Flying Saucer At Sunset

Lenticular clouds (Altocumulus lenticularis) are stationary lens-shaped clouds with a smooth layered appearance that form in the troposphere, usually above mountain ranges. One was spotted in Singapore recently...

Eyes Of 30,000 Honeycombs

With 30,000 individual facets, dragonflies have the most number of facets among insects. Each facet, or ommatidia, creates its own image, and the dragonfly brain has eight pairs of descending visual neurons to compile those thousands of images into one picture...

A Kaleidoscope Of Colours, Shapes And Patterns

Spectacular and innovative in design, the Flower Dome replicates the cool-dry climate of Mediterranean regions like South Africa, California and parts of Spain and Italy. Home to a collection of plants from deserts all over the world, it showcases the adaptations of plants to arid environments...

Lightning Strikes, Not Once, But Many Times

Unlike light, lightning does not travel in a straight line. Instead, it has many branches. These other branches flashed at the same time as the main strike. The branches are actually the step leaders that were connected to the leader that made it to its target...

Are You My Dinner Tonight?

A T-Rex has 24-26 teeth on its upper jaw and 24 more on its lower jaw. Juveniles have small, sharp blade-shaped teeth to cut flesh, whereas adults have huge, blunt, rounded teeth for crushing bones. Is the T-Rex a bone-crushing scavenger?

Between The Stalks & The Gravel

Pandan Reservoir
West, Singapore
January 2013

Pandan Reservoir is not really known for its spiders and avian subjects. It is mainly because the plants there are mainly cultured ones - those that are planted for aesthetic reasons to beautify the environment. Yet Merlion Wayfarer was there earlier this month. Why? To see the amazing sunset there. (See "The Sun Sets In The West At Pandan Reservoir")

What was more than ample were scores of Pacific Swallows (Hirundo Tahitica Javanica) busy zipping through the waters, some even came as close as an arm's length in their evening buzz...
  

Where water plants were visible, there were many old webs by big-jawed spiders. These were mainly loose webs which were at least a day old. However as it neared sunset, these dormant spiders started coming to live to rebuild their webs for the volley of night insects.
 

Here is one more Mangrove Big-Jawed Spider (Tetragnatha Josephi Okuma) within the periphery of Merlion Wayfarer's lens in its web-building process. As it zips up and down each strand of web, the spider alternatively faces the camera with its top and bottom surface...
 
  
Due to the hundreds of thousands of gravel bits lining the jogging path, Merlion Wayfarer did something interesting today - she looked down at her feet while she walked. She spots a shy ground spider (Spotted Ground Spider, Storena Cinctipes)...
  

It's a bit harder to spot these are they scuttle around at a breakneck speed - even for human eyes. Even when noticed, their colour and behaviour resemble worker ants exploring the gravel path. And when alerted, they will hide in the nooks and crannies of the stones. A good eye and a flash is required for these shots...
  
  
Look at the size of its saucer-like eyes and the beautiful rusty-brown spots on its back...



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