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?

Showing posts with label Unused Spaces. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unused Spaces. Show all posts

Rail Corridor - A Peaceful Walk

6:38 PM  , , , , , , , ,  

Bukit Timah
Rail Corridor
Central, Singapore
May 2014

The start of the path seems to go on "forever" in a straight mud-track road. Along the way, several concrete pedestrian bridges crisscross it 


Of Spiders & Creatures Caught In Somethings

A muscular Stoliczka's Crab Spider (Thomisus stoliczka) waving its front legs about 
like Toy Story's Rocky Gibraltar...

A free-roaming Shield Bug (Pentatomoidea)wanders about on a leaf... 

Oblivious to the plight of 2 of its friends who lie entombed in nearby webs...

A short distance away, a grasshopper (Orthoptera ) has a foot bath in a raindrop on a leaf...

The Natural Greenery

The figs are in season now - A laden sprig of Common Yellow Stem Fig (Ficus fistulosa)...

A strong smell wafts through the air - Likewise, the jackfruits are in season too...

Next to the durian, chempedaks and jackfruits have the strongest aroma. The jackfruit is a close cousin of the chempedak with a similar appearance, but is much bigger and rounder, about 4 times the size of a chempadak.

Of Butts & Dragons

A light Malayan Eggfly (Hypolimnas anomala) Butterfly rests on a fern...

A Blue Dasher (Brachydiplax chalybea) Dragonfly perches on a stalk of grass...

Of Birds That Fly & Chirp

This is a Pacific Swallow (Hirundo tahitica). The very same bird that zips around the sky and hovers above the surface of the water near water sources...

A very tame Javan Myna (Acridotheres javanicus). Instead of the pale yellow blue eyes of its papa and mama, this "baby" version has the clearest pale blue eyes...
(Not noisy too!)

It was certainly a peaceful walk away from the hustle and bustle of city life...


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One Dollar, Two Dollars

9:43 PM  , , , , ,  

Bidadari
North-East, Singapore
June 2013

It has been quite some time since Merlion Wayfarer stepped into a cemetery. Well, an exhumed one, to be exact. Today, she ventured into Bidadari with a nature pal. (Bidadari is best explored with a kaki, to be on the safe side.)
  

One of the safe paths to walk. If you stick to these paths, you need not step into the long grass areas. The grass here can be as long as thigh height, and there are lots of active ants here, so do wear long pants with longer socks.
  

A Hippasa Holmerae (Lawn Wolf Spider) with morning dew drops on its web. It builds the familiar sheet-webs that sparkle with dew drops over grassy grounds at dawn. The spider hides in a silken funnel that leads to the web and pounces on any grasshopper that lands on it.
   
  
The Blue Pansy (Junonia Orithya Wallacei) is a sun-loving butterfly, which can usually be found on grassy patches in open areas. This one here is having a hard time, as can be seen from its tattered wings.
  

A brilliant gold Orthetrum Luzonicum (Slender Blue Skimmer) rests on a blade of dried grass. At certain angles, the bronze on its wings shimmers in the bright morning sunlight.


The Mycalesis Mineus Macromalayana (Dark Brand Bush Brown) is one of the most common species of the many look-alike species of the genus Mycalesis. It is a drab-looking butterfly, with a dark-greyish brown upperside and a paler underside which features a white post-discal stripe on the fore and hindwings.
   

The Eurystomus Orientalis (Oriental Dollarbird) is named because of the distinctive blue coin-shaped spots on its wings. It is most commonly seen as a single bird with a distinctive upright silhouette on a bare branch high in a tree, from which it hawks for insects, returning to the same perch after a few seconds.
   

It has a distinctive call - a continuous guttural chirr, 
and sometimes it hides in the ample shade provided by the trees here with a mate...


The full albums are available at:
 

Sources

  • "Dollarbird". Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollarbird (10 June 2013).
     
  • "Junonia orithya wallacei". Butterfly Circle Checklist. Retrieved from http://www.butterflycircle.com/checklist%20V2/CI/index.php/start-page/startpage/showbutterfly/108 (10 June 2013, Expired as of 2014).
    •    
  • "Mycalesis mineus macromalayana". Butterfly Circle Checklist. Retrieved from http://www.butterflycircle.com/checklist%20V2/CI/index.php/start-page/startpage/showbutterfly/117 (10 June 2013, Expired as of 2014

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