Mushroom bloom at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve

A trip to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve yesterday reveals....


blooming fungi near a trunk of a tree. The sight is spectacular.

Fungi are decomposers, breaking fallen trees and dead animals down to release nutrients for living plants and animals to take up. Thus, they are very important in forest ecosystem.


Some 1000 species of fungi have been recorded in Singapore, many of which from Bukit Timah. Many more awaits discovery.


The next time you bring home a dead leaf or branch, think of the thousands of fungi and microorganisms that you are taking out with it and the loss of nutrients to the other forest plants.

Changi cockatoos and hornbills

During a low tide walk last week at Changi, not only did we marvel at the rich biodiversity of the shore during super low tide, we also encountered several beautiful birds like the cockatoos and hornbills.


We spotted three Tanimbar Cockatoo (Cacatua goffini) foraging for food at the grassland. According to The Exotic Village Birds of Changi! by Subaraj Rajathurai:

"You may have heard some exotic screeching in Changi Viillage as you tucked into a meal after some hearty explorations in Ubin. Well, wonder no more, and soon you will have a better idea of what to look out for!

The cockatoo at Changi Village is the Tanimbar Cockatoo (Cacatua goffini). There are usually about 5 birds around the village Angsana trees along the main road and they actually nest in tree holes of a couple of those trees.

There are up to 20 Tanimbar Cockatoos in the Loyang/Changi area. Elsewhere in Singapore, there are a few populations of the Tanimbar Cockatoo including about 40 on Sentosa. The Tanimbar Cockatoo is native only to the Tanimbar Islands of Wallacea"


The Tanimbar Cockatoo in Singapore feeds on the fruits of various trees in particular the Sea Almond (Terminalia catappa) which these birds are picking from the ground. Although these cockatoos are not native here, Singapore has become the most accessible place to see this species in the wild. :-)


I love this photograph shot, with two cockatoos doing the same action with the sea almond fruits.


Soon, they flew to the trees as we approached a little too near them.


Don't you think they are darlings? :-)

At another part of Changi, we found even more spectacular birds, hornbills!


According to Ria's online guide to Chek Jawa, the Oriental pied-hornbills (Anthracoceros albirostris) are the only truly wild hornbills found on Singapore. "Unlike most other hornbills, Oriental pied-hornbills can be found outside primary rainforests and may visit inhabited areas to feed on fruit. But they still depend on large living trees for nesting sites." Adelle told me there are hornbills flying over from Ubin to Changi and I guess these hornbills I've seen are from Ubin.


The Oriental pied-hornbill is basically a black-and-white bird: mostly black with a white belly and thighs, and white accents around the eye, on the wing tips and tail.


Oriental pied-hornbills often forage in pairs or small groups, often rather quietly for such large birds.


The Oriental pied-hornbill plays an important role in the health of the forest as it disperses seeds that are too big for smaller birds to eat.


Hornbills eat mainly fruit, but they also take insects and small animals including reptiles, birds and mammals.

What a wonderful morning out at Changi to be with these birds!

Checking sand stars out at Pasir Ris

On the last day of my four sand stars recce trips, I have decided to take a look at Pasir Ris with Khairul, Liana, Ivan and Geraldine. It was quite a last minute decision so I really appreciate that they could come and give me support, especially Khairul who had to wait for the public transport to come.

Pasir Ris is a good spot to find sand stars (Astropecten sp.) as Ria had kindly helped me take a look at this location last Tuesday when the series of low tide just started. I thought I should see it for myself.


Here is a group photo of the team today. Though we are all sleepy, the lively shore kept us all excited.


And indeed, there are a lot of sand stars! The most I've found across my four recce trips.


We find them either out foraging during low tide, or semi-burrowed. However, those that have burrowed were out of our sight.


Today we hit a new record of 120 sand stars measured! Actually there are many more still, but I only brought along four datasheets. Also 120 recordings is also enough as well.

Very quickly after about an hour, we got some time to explore this new shore which was the first time for all of us visiting today. And wow, we saw many cake sea stars (Anthenea aspera)!


This medium sized cake sea star in particular is very pretty with yellow centre and red edges on its arms.


This is the oral surface of the cake sea star.


Here are more cake sea stars that we have found.


If you have noticed, cake sea stars are very interesting as they come in different colours, pigments and patterns. They are definitely one of my favourite sea stars. :-)


For some weird reason, we saw many dead catfishes on the high shore with markings on the sand. I'm quite sure it's done by some people. It's puzzling though


Ivan spotted an octopus, which quickly decides to burrow into a hole.


Usually we see peacock anemones either happily submerged in the water with its tentacles looking flowery or the tentacles shrunk into its body column when it is out of water. This one is weird as the tentacles are still out despite being out of water.


Crevices of rocks house many creatures like this black sea urchin (Temnopleurus sp.).


Soon, Geraldine found many mass gatherings of these black sea urchins, which was also brought up by Ria in her wildfilms blog. (Photo by Geraldine)


At the rocky surfaces, there were many zebra-coral-lookalike corals growing on it.


Sponges are also encrusted onto rock surfaces and they can come in different pretty colours and shades.


And yes, there are crabs that are called sponge crabs. This was spotted by Khairul as the moving rock from the top. It was so well camouflaged but its movement gave its presence away. I find its pink claws fascinating.


Flipping the crab over to see its underside, we can view it better without the sponge blocking.


Liana spotted a seahorse on the silty shore. Wow, four seahorse encounters in my four consecutive trips.


Soon, I also spotted another sea horse. It is really surprising to see Pasir Ris also have seahorses thriving in our seagrass beds.


The most starry find of the day will be this near-adult sized cake sea star. I guess its diameter should be about 10-15cm in length.


Not long after we started exploring the shore, the heavens opened and rain poured. Umbrella and ponchos were out since the rain started off not too heavy.


We continued exploring and I found this pot where there many blueish green sponges around it. If you look closer inside the pot, there is a starry surprise.


Yes, there is yet another juvenile cake sea star! This is a photo taken when I took it out to photograph on the seagrasses.


Its quite a cake-y day during the super low tide.


And one more cake sea star before you get an overdose looking at so many of them.


At small holes of rocks, you might even find rock stars (Asterina coronata) hidden within.


Despite the rain, there were people bringing their dog to wade in the sea. Liana was very excited to see the cute dog.


This dog was very happy running about on the shore and in the water.

However, the rain during this super low tide became much heavier later and we had to end the exploration and seek shelter.


Near the shelter we were seeking, we found this Banded Bull Frog (Kaloula pulchra)! It is not native and is known to have immigrant from West Malaysia during the 1800s. They are actually very commonly seen islandwide, especially after heavy downpour.


As we were waiting in the shelter for the heavy downpour to drizzle down, we came up with ingenious ways to save water to clean ourselves from the mud in our pants and booties. That include inverting umbrella and taking out the tray to collect rainwater which will later be used for washing up. Yeah, that's me drenched, yet "playing" with water. (Photo by Geraldine)


Poor sleepybunny Liana was so sleepy that she dozed off in her poncho in the shelter. I tried to take a photo of her sleeping but she woke up just on time to be caught in surprise.

Soon, we were all decided to leave earlier due to the rain though today's tide was low and long. Ivan was game enough to stay back solo to check out the shore after the rain.


And he found these sand stars, white in colour, a sign of distress! They were all doing very well before the rain, so I suspect the heavy downpour during a super low tide can sometimes be disastrous. (Photo by Ivan)

Ivan commented in his own words, "There were seriously a lot more. Some were half-buried, so they should have been alive until just recently, a lot were just sitting on the shore, others were being washed in with the tide. These 2 are representative of all the others I found; pale, not moving at all, tube feet not even twitching. Put them in the water, they just swirl around with the waves. So I guess they really are quite dead."

Indeed echinoderms are really sensitive to high salinity drops which is hastened when the tide goes out, exposing the shore to freshwater from the direct rain and the water drained from the land. I hope that most sand stars would have burrowed deep enough to avoid being affected and that they will be fine.

That's the end of my five consecutive low tide adventure this series, will be going Malaysia for church camp tomorrow. The tide will still be low on Sunday and Monday, so watch out for other blogs for their adventures. :-)

More marine creatures of Changi Beach

Continuing the previous post of the galaxy of stars found at Changi yesterday, below are other marine creatures we encountered during our recce for sand stars.


Changi and other northern shores are wonderful places to find these colourful peacock anemones that look like flowers.


On a pillar, I found another anemone that am not sure what it is eventually since its facing downwards.


As usual, Changi has many geographical sea hares. I have noticed though that after daybreak, they tend to burrow downwards.


This stick looking creature is an animal, it is a sea pencil that is actually related to corals.


Yet there is another stick looking creature that I've no idea what exactly it is. It might be an anemone, sea cucumber or something else.


Also spotted among the seagrass beds include this thorny sea cucumber.


The very low tides reveal large carpet anemones near the very low water mark like this one.


It's pleasant to also see purple carpet anemones on our shores, adding on to the variety of colours.


The FIND OF THE DAY is this bailer volute (Melo melo) which is as big as about 20cm in length! It got its common name because the large shell was often used to bail water out of boats.


This is a very rare snail and it is my first time seeing it in the wild. A reason for its rarity will be that it is heavily poached. The bailer volute is thus listed among the threatened animals of Singapore. I hope this one remains in the wild. The last bailer volute was also spotted by Ria and Chay Hoon at Changi, but at a precarious situation where it was already poached. Read more about it at the Wildfilms blog.

In the blog post, Ria stated:

"Is this the last Melo melo on Changi?

We were debating about whether to post about the Melo melo.

If we did, people might actually come look for and remove these beautiful and rare snails. But if we didn't, no one would know that our shores are slowly disappearing into cooking pots.

Recently, it was reported that Malaysia could clone endangered leatherback turtles that face extinction because they "have been hunted for their meat and shells and many get entangled and die in fishing nets in the sea". It is tragic that we only appreciate what we have lost after we have eaten and carelessly killed the last of a special creature."


Other marine wonders found include this shrunk peacock anemone with brittlestairs all around its column.


These pretty brittlestars are shy and hide during the day. So it is good to spot it before the sunrise.


More special finds include this seahorse that clung on to algae and hydroids.


Another seahorse was also found on the same day!


Seahorse is not a horse, it is actually a fish. This green pipefish is in fact a close relative to seahorses. The seahorse is actually a fish because it is equipped with a backbone, (unusual grape-like) gills, swim bladder and fins.


We moved on to check out the rocky habitats and there were many large sized sponges.


As we were flipping rocks to check for rock stars, it was surprising to find four beautiful flatworms together!


Towards the end of the trip, one of my friends found this sea urchin that looks like the salmacis sea urchin but has red spines.


While we were leaving when the tide returns, we chanced upon this monitor lizard busking under the sun. As you can see, it has a forked tongue which it sticks in and out regularly to “smell” its prey.

Changi is indeed teemed with life if we allow it to remain undisturbed.