Night Walk At A Secret Place (07 Nov 2015)

A fellow beetle-lover informed me that he know of a location in Singapore where the Aegus chelifer Stag Beetle can be found. I managed to get some direction to the place and decided to check out the place together with Reynard (another fellow beetle-lover).

In all honesty, I was not very hopeful to find the Aegus chelifer Stag Beetle but nevertheless I was looking forward to the trip. Here's a photograph of a Four-lined Tree Frog (Polypedates leucomystax) that we encountered at the secret location.

The first beetle encountered at the place was a commonly Chafer Beetle (Apogonia expeditionis). This particular type of beetle was out in large number, and you can find them almost on every plant that we checked.

Near to the Apogonia expeditionis Chafer Beetle was a lone Leaf Beetle (Graphops curtipennis).

Moving to a patch of tall Simpoh Air plants, a lone Leaf Beetle (Aulacophora frontalis) was on a dried up vine on the plant.

There were not many beetles encountered along the way and hence this tiny 2 mm beetle was a welcomed sight.

More walking without finding any beetles and I was glad to find this commonly encountered Chafer Beetle (Adoretus compressus) resting under a leaf.

Next to the Adoretus compressus Chafer Beetle was a first-time-encountered Chafer Beetle. This looked very much like the Apogonia aequabilis Chafer Beetle but it has a much broader body.

Coming to some large plants, I was glad to find another first-time-encountered Long Horned Beetle.

Near to the Long Horned Beetle was a pair of mating Click Beetle (Pectocera babai). This is the first time I encountered the female of the species. Didn't expect it to be so much bigger than the male.

We finally reached the spot that we were told where the Aegus chelifer Stag Beetles can be found. Instead of finding the Stag Beetle, I found this 5 mm Darkling Beetle instead.

After some searching, our efforts were finally rewarded with the finding of a female Aegus chelifer Stag Beetle.

We got really excited when we found a small Aegus chelifer Stag Beetle larvae.

To our amazement, we managed to find a total of 2 female, 4 male and 2 larvae of the Aegus chelifer Stag Beetle. It is likely that there are more of them around the area.  After photographing the beetles, they were returned to their original hiding places. And we make a promise to keep this location a secret in order to protect this rare beetle from being poached.

Here are the rest of the Aegus chelifer Stag Beetles that we found at the location.

While looking for the Aegus chelifer Stag Beetle, Reynard found this unique looking beetle larvae.

After all the excitements, we decided to call it a day and leave via another path. Along the way, we found a few of this shiny Chafer Beetle on a small bush.

Before we reached the end of the trail, we found a patch of badly eaten vegetation, with a few tens of the culprit Chafer Beetle (Phyllophaga marginalis) on them.

The last beetle for the trip was a mating pair of Leaf Beetle found with the Phyllophaga marginalis Chafer Beetle.

I was so focused in wanting to find the Aegus chelifer Stag Beetle that I totally forgotten that I am also testing out a new DIY diffuser. The diffuser works pretty well, just that it still let too much light through, creating hot spots on the beetles photographed. This was a wonderful trip with the finding of the Aegus chelifer Stag Beetle.

If you happened to know of locations where you can find other species of  Stag Beetle in Singapore, appreciate that you can share that with me at davidmoh1313@gmail.com . Thank you.