Night Walk At Mount Faber Park (04 Jun 2021)

My last blog post was more than a month ago, partially due to the Covid-19 measures, termed as Phase 2 (Heightened Alert), and partially due to the exceptionally warm weather that we are experiencing in Singapore. In fact, I was all ready to go for a macro photography session last week, but cancelled it last minute due to the warm weather. Although the weather was still as warm today, there was some rain in the afternoon. As such, I decided to proceed with the session with my friend HW, and go to the Mount Faber Park as previously planned.

Here's a photograph of some small mushrooms growing on a fallen log.

The first beetle for the trip was a pretty commonly encountered Chafer Beetle (Maladera castanea).

The next beetle encountered was a commonly encountered Chafer Beetle (Apogonia expeditionis), hiding behind a curled up leaf.

A surprise find was a 12 mm Long Horned Beetle (Pterolophia melanura) resting on the underside of  a tree vine.

After encountering the Long Horned Beetle, it took us quite a while before we found this first-time-encountered 3 mm Leaf Beetle. I am not too sure of the identity of this beetle, but it could possibly be Basilepta anthracina.

Immediately after encountering the Leaf Beetle, I was happy to find several of this Tiger Beetle (Cicindela aurulenta) resting together on some low bushes.

The next beetle looked similar to those Darkling Beetles that I previously encountered, except for the size of the beetle is half the size of previously encountered beetles, at about 10 mm. As such, I put this as a first-time-encountered beetle. 

While I was looking for other beetles, HW called out to me that he found this False Click Beetle, resting on the underside of a leave. To photograph it, I had to carefully turn over the leaf with my left hand while using my right hand to photograph it.

The trail that we took seemed to have been disused for a while and we ended up bashing through the thick undergrowth for a good part of the trip in order to reach the summit of Mount Faber Park. By the time we reached the summit, I was drenched through to my skin by my own perspiration. Pretty tired from the unexpected "exercise", we decided to call it a day and headed towards the way to the bottom of the hill.  Just then I found this small 3 mm Darkling Beetle on a small stool made from a sawn tree trunk. 

The trip was particularly tiring due to the unexpected "exercise" needed to get to the summit of Mount Faber Park. The number of beetles encountered during the trip was a great dismal as I was hopeful that we will be able to find a lot more beetles than this. Nevertheless, this is still a wonderful trip as I am able to test out my DIY fix to the camera problem mentioned in my previous blog post. 

Lastly, I have decided to go back to my previous style of writing more for the blog post. Personally, I prefer to write more as compared to just putting the information on the beetles encountered, even though this will take a lot more time to write the post. May be I will do this for the moment while the Covid-19 pandemic is still going on. 

Until my next post, stay safe and stay at home! 

Night Walk At Mount Faber Park (23 Apr 2021)

It has been a while that I did any macro photography session, this is mainly due to some problems with my camera recently. Taking advantage of the fine weather, I decided to recce a part of Mount Faber Park that I saw on Google Map. 

Sadly, my camera was still not working properly in that the camera was not able to detect my macro lens. Nevertheless, I decided to continue with the "default" setting of 1/200 and F-- (yes, the aperture was not set according to my selection, probably due to the problem of not able to detect the macro lens). Hopefully, I can do something to resolve the problem.

Enough of my "sorrows", but before I continue I would like to apologize for the quality of the photographs as I was not able to gauge too well the focus due to the mentioned problem.  Here's an ant-mimic spider that I came across during the trip. It looked so much like the commonly encountered Golden Ant (Polyrhachis illaudata).

Darkling Beetle ~ 4 mm

Fungus Beetle (Amblyopus vittatus) ~ 10 mm

Chafer Beetle (Matadera castanea) ~ 8 mm

Long Horned Beetle (Aeolesthes holosericeus) ~ 15 mm

Darkling Beetle ~ 10 mm

Fungus Beetle (Eumorphus quadriguttatus quadriguttatus) ~ 10 mm

Darkling Beetle ~ 10 mm

Chafer Beetle (Apogonia expeditionis) ~ 8 mm

Tortoiseshell Beetle (Aspidimorpha miliaris) ~ 12 mm

Darkling Beetle ~ 2 mm

Tiger Beetle (Cicindela aurulenta) ~ 15 mm

Although during this trip not many beetles were encountered, I am glad that the location seemed promising and I will surely go back there in the near future.

Night Walk At Tampines Eco Green (27 Oct 2020)

 It has been raining a lot in Singapore recently and together with my busy schedule, I have not done any macro photography session for quite a while. Taking the opportunity that the weather was pretty dry for the day, HW and I decided to go for a night macro session at Tampines Eco Green,

As mentioned in my previous post, there seemed to be something wrong with my camera that caused the focus of my camera not as sharp as before. Nevertheless, I am determined to get some photographs during this session.

Here's a photograph of an Asian Red and Black Long Horn Grasshopper. I particularly like this shot as the brown dried grass seeds contrasted strongly with the grasshopper. 

Chafer Beetle (Adoretus compressus) ~ 8 mm

Chafer Beetle (Apogonia expeditionis) ~ 8 mm

First-time-encounter Long Horne Beetle (~15 mm) found on the boarding put up for the constructions along the Tampines river.

Chafer Beetle (Aprosterna pallide) ~ 8 mm

Chafer Beetle (Maladera castanea) ~ 5 mm

Gold Dust Weevil (Hypomece squamosus) ~ 15 mm

Although the trip was not fruitful, the Gold Dust Beetle encountered near the end of our trip has made the trip worth the while as it has been years I last encountered the Gold Dust Beetle.

Night Walk At Windsor Nature Park (09 Oct 2020)

 After getting over the inertia of going out of the house, HW and I decided to go to Windsor Nature Park for our regular macro photography session. It could possibly be too long that I didn't use my camera, my camera was working up and I was having problems with taking proper shots through out the trip. The camera kept refusing to focus properly and the aperture also kept freezing up in between shots.  Nevertheless, here are some of the more presentable photographs for the night. Please pardon some of the slightly out of focus shots.

A relatively big Tree Hopper (~ 25mm) was the first critter encountered at the place.

Beetle larva ~ 2 mm

Ground Beetle (Onyptergia longispinis) ~ 25 mm

Rove Beetle ~ 3 mm

Fungus Weevil (Eucorynus crassicornis) ~ 8 mm

Daarkling Beetle ~ 3 mm

Darkling Beetle (Ceropria superba) ~ 10 mm

Chafer Beetle (Apogonia expeditionis) ~ 8 mm

Darkling Beetle ~ 10 mm

Darkling Beetle (Gonocephalum depressum) ~ 15 mm

Darkling Beetle ~ 5 mm

Ground Beetle ~ 25 mm

Chafer Beetle ~ 10 mm

Fungus Beetle (Eumorphus tetraspilotus) ~ 10 mm

This trip was not particularly fruitful, partially because of the weather and partially due to the malfunctioning of my camera. Nevertheless, this is still a good trip especially it is after a while of non-action.

Making of Beetle Specimens - Part 2 (06 Jun 2020)

This is the long overdue Part 2 of the Making of Beetle Specimens post. Here are some of the beetle specimens that I managed to pin during the Covid-19 circuit breaker period. Enjoy!