Venus Drive was chosen as I thought the chances of finding beetles would be higher. At the same time, it would avoid the durian pickers crowd. As expected the place was very quiet and I am the only one on the track for almost two hours or so.
I made a bee-line to the usual spots where I would find Leaf Beetles in the morning, hoping to find some Leaf Beetles but to my disappointment there was not a single Leaf Beetle in sight. So I decided to head straight into the trail, hoping to find some beetles. I walked for a short while without finding any beetles until I came to a piece of dead log. A Fungus Beetle (Eumorphus assamensis) came out to greet me. Sadly, this was the only beetle I found on the log.
Near to the dead log, I found this small (~6 mm) Net-winged Beetle resting on a rattan leaf. Not sure if this is a Net-winged Beetle or some sort of Fungus Beetle as I recently read that there are Fungus Beetles that looked very much like Net-winged Beetle.
Moving to another fallen log, a familiar Fungus Beetle was found munching on a white fungus growth.
Flying nearby was a Tumbling Flower Beetle (Glipa malaccana) that occasionally stopped for a brief moment just to tease me into trying to photograph it. It was quite a challenge to photograph this hyper-active beetle using my 18-55 mm lens. Nevertheless I still managed to catch a few shots of it, albeit not too good ones.
I quickly reached the clearings where I used to find a number of beetles in the night. There were not too many beetles there but I managed to spot this big (~20 mm) first-time-encountered Darkling Beetle resting under some shades.
On a nearby dead log was a few of this Fungus Beetles (Eumorphus quadriguttatus).
From the few beetles encountered so far, I decided to go to the Fungus Paradise that I found previously to see if I can find some Fungus Beetles. Sure enough I found on a dead tree stump a group of about 10 of this Fungus Beetle.
Moving further, I found a lone Fungus Beetle (Eumorphus politus) on a dead leaf on top of a fallen tree log. It looked like it is feeding on something that was on the leaf.
Moving along the path and trying very hard to spot more beetles, this small (~5 mm) Fungus Weevil landed on a leaf right in front me. How wonderful!
Moving to another dead log, I found another lone Fungus Beetle hiding under some shade on the log. This type of beetle is in abundant in the night.
A small beetle larvae was spotted on the same log.
At this point in time, the sky started to rumble - it seemed that it was going to rain soon. So I picked up my paces but eyes still scanning the vegetation carefully for beetles. I finally found an interesting looking first-time-encountered beetle on a small plant.
As I was walking faster than usual, a whitish beetle flew across my path. Not wanting to miss photographing any beetles, I followed this 6 mm Leaf Beetle a short distance until it decided to take shelter under a leaf.
While I was photographing the Leaf Beetle I found a fallen tree further in the bushes, so I decided to take a detour and see if there are any beetles. I was pretty disappointed in not finding any Fungus Beetle on the log until I saw this lovely reddish-orange Fungus Beetle (Stenotarsus pardalis) resting on a leaf. This is one of my favorite beetles.
Moving quickly ahead, I found a small (~5 mm) Leaf Beetle (Argopus brevis) having a great time munching on a leaf. Its high tea time for the beetle.
Just as I am about to leave the place, I was pleasantly surprised to find a Long Horned Beetle (Thranius bimachulatus) resting motionlessly on a rubber tree leaf. This is the second time that I encountered this beetle. Nice!
Near to the Long Horned Beetle was this tiny 1 mm first-time-encountered beetle. It looked like a Leaf Beetle.
The last beetle that I encountered was this 2 mm Fungus Beetle moving about on a fungus laden leaf.
The trip was not exceptionally fruitful but it was not unexpected given that it was in the afternoon. In any case, besides the beetle I also found two durians along the way.
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