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!
