Morning Walk At Venus Drive (05 Nov 2016)

According to our National Environment Agency, Singapore has entered into the inter-monsoon period (the transition from Southwest monsoon to Northeast monsoon), marked by increased rain showers. This also means a high probability that I may not be able to do my regular macro-photography sessions in the coming weeks.

For this week, I decided to go for a morning walk at Venus Drive since it has been a while I last did a morning walk at Venus Drive. When I set off from my house the sky was overcast and looked like it rained during the night. I proceeded with my plan and headed for Venus Drive, confident that I will still find beetles at Venus Drive even when the weather is wet. When I reached the place the vegetation there were wet with rain, thus making the chance of finding beetles very much slimmer.

Here's a photograph of an Ant-mimic Spider found resting on a leaf of an Elephant Ear plant.

The first beetle for the trip was an Ant-like Flower Beetle (Anthelephila cyanea) found under another Elephant Ear plant.

The highlight of the trip came early for this trip. While I was tracking a flying Net-winged Beetle into some low bushes, I was thrilled to find this 5 mm Dung Beetle (Onthophagus leosemontis) resting on a wild pepper leaf.

As expected, not many critters were seen as I walked down the trail let alone finding beetles. It was after a while of slow walking and careful scanning of plants and trees, before I found this small 4 mm Leaf Beetle (Graphops curtipennis). Prior to finding this Leaf Beetle, there were a few more beetles encountered but I was not able to photograph them because they were more skittish then normal. This is a little counter-intuitive to me as I would expect them to be lethargic because of the lower temperature brought about by the rain and overcast sky.

More walking without finding any beetles until this Fungus Beetle (Eumorphus quadriguttatus quadriguttatus) found resting on a leaf.

More walking until I found several of this Leaf Beetle (Argopus brevis) on their favorite food plant - Clidemia hirta. Interestingly, this usually not so skittish Leaf Beetle were super-skittish during this trip, and took me a while to catch a good shot of it.

I was glad that the rain has not dampened the activity of one of my favorite Ladybird Beetles - 3 mm white color Ladybird Beetle. Many of this beetle were seen flying about and procreating under some large leaves. It is always a challenge to photograph this beetle as it is very active and would fly away upon detecting the slightest of movements.

Moving on, I found this empty beetle larvae shell on a tree trunk. It looked like it had met with an untimely death by predation.

The last beetle for the trip was this lovely 5 mm blue metallic color Leaf Beetle (Hoplosaenidea singaporensis) found on a leaf shaded by a tree.  It was while I was photographing this beetle that the sky began to drizzle, and when the rain became heavier that I decided to call it a day.

Although this was a short trip due to the rain, I am glad to be able to photograph the Dung Beetle as it is only the second time that I found this beetle in all the years of photographing beetles. This is a short but good trip indeed.