Night Walk At Admiralty Park (28 Mar 2014)

It has been a while since I visited the Admiralty Park so I decided to give that place a try again. One of the reasons why I didn't visit the place for a while was mainly due to the ants infestation at the place. The place is literally crawling with countless dark brown colored ants that do not hesitate climbing onto you and sink their little mandibles into you. This type of ants is commonly found in our parks and gardens, but for some reasons Admiralty Park seemed to have a lot more of them.

I am particularly irritated by them crawling into my socks and bite me from the inside of the socks. At times, they would crawl up your legs and randomly bite you under the pants. Although the bites were not particularly painful, the number of bites when the ants "attack" would often send me running off and stomping the ground hard in an attempt to shake them off. This is something that you would not want when you are doing macro photography.

Here's a photograph of the tiny brown ant.

Just like last week, it rained just before I reached Admiralty Park and with it also went my hope of finding beetles. Only after searching for a good 10 minutes that I managed to find this Darkling Beetle resting on a tree trunk. Noticed the wet tree bark that the beetle was on.

Next to the Darkling Beetle was a commonly encountered 2 mm Fungus Beetle.

On the other side of the tree trunk was this metallic bluish-purple beetle.

On a plant near by was a Chafer Beetle (Apogonia expeditionis). Little did I know at this point that this type of beetle was out in force for the night. In fact, I came across easily a hundred if not two of them for the entire trip. you literally see them everywhere.

Moving further into the trail, I was so glad to find another type of Chafer Beetle (Adoretus compressus), especially so when all you see were the Apognia expeditionis Chafer Beetle.

After walking for a while before I came across this Chafer Beetle (Apogonia aequabilis). This was the only specimen that I came across for this trip.

The rain that came earlier has driven most of the beetle into hiding and finding this lone Tiger Beetle (Cicindela aurulenta) resting on a wet leaf brought some excitement to the trip.

Not sure what is happening at Admiralty Park as most of the trees' trunk were wrapped up with gunnysack. Because of the gunnysacks that were around the tree trunks, I was not able to find any beetles on it except for this Darkling Beetle. It must be the Columbus of its kind to be found on this whole new alien world as I didn't find a single beetle, except this one, on any of the trees that have gunnysack wrapping on them.

The last beetle that I found was also the highlight of the trip. It was a Fungus Beetle (Encymon scintillans). This is only the second time that I came across it at Admiralty Park.

The trip was almost a washout due to the rain. I am still glad that I have made the trip as I am able to find the Fungus Beetle (Encymon scintillans). This is only the second time that I came across this type of beetle.