For this trip I decided to go to the Lorong Halus Wetland as I have not been to the place at night before. At the same time, I also wanted to try out the twin flash that I bought on-line recently. After having tried out the extension tube with my Tamron AF70-300 mm lens previously, I decided to put everything together and test all of them out together. Although this works well together, the weight of the entire set up is a little heavy to my liking.
The weather was dry as it has not rained for almost a month. Plants and grass were turning brown and can been seen in many parts of Singapore. At Lorong Halus, what used to be lush green bushes and plants were now brown and dying, with many brown dead leaves lined the path. Thankfully while I am writing this blog, the sky darkened and started to rain heavily. Hopefully this heavy rain will bring back the lush greenery that we have taken for granted in what we called ourselves as City in a Garden, Singapore.
The place was bone dry even though it is just next to the Punggol-Serangoon Reservoir. This gave me a bad feeling that the trip will not be a fruitful one. The first beetle that greeted me was a 3 mm Fungus Beetle.
Near to the Fungus Beetle was a lone Darkling Beetle which turned out to be a first-time-encountered beetle. This beetle is different from the commonly encountered Darkling Beetle in that it has a much longer body (elytra).
Moving to a small mud puddle (which I remembered it to be a large pool of water when I last visited the place), several of this first-time-encountered Water Beetle were seen swimming in their fast dwindling watery home.
The next beetle was a tiny Fungus Beetle that is less than 2 mm in size.
The highlight of the trip was finding several of this 10 mm first-time-encountered Firefly Beetle (Pteroptyx valida). This is an easy beetle to locate in the dark due to its blinking greenish-yellow at its abdomen.
Nearing the end of the trail, several of this commonly encountered Chafer Beetle (Apogonia expeditionis) were seen on the Water Sensitive Plant (Neptunia natans). Notice the chew marks on the leaf?
On a tree were several pupae which looked like the earlier Fungus Beetle.
Just before I exit the trail, this Soldier Beetle (Crudosilis ruficollis) was seen resting on a blade of grass. It was a welcomed sight as the number of beetles encountered during this trip was really very low.
This trip was not very fruitful given the number of beetles encountered, but having three first-time-encountered beetles make the trip worth the while.
No comments:
Post a Comment