Sungei Buloh Anniversary Walk 2012

Hello!  It's been a long while since the last update...  November was a slow month, but December brings lots of exciting places / activities, beginning with last Sunday's Sungei Buloh Anniversary Walk!  Jasela and Yuxian, who also came for the Kusu Island reef walk / picnic, joined me in yet another nature adventure :).

Huge props to everyone who turned up, since the walk started at 8am in the morning on a Sunday.  Biggest. Challenge. EVER.

6th December 2012 marks the 19th anniversary of Sungei Buloh's official opening by then-PM Goh Chok Tong.  Sungei Buloh was Singapore's first gazetted wetlands reserve, and also our first ASEAN Heritage Park, due to the many species of migratory birds which stop here every year.  As far as I know, it's the most famous and accessible mangrove reserve in Singapore.

The Raffles Museum Toddycats conduct an anniversary guided walk around Sungei Buloh every year, and are a veritable fountain of knowledge about all things Nature in Singapore - keep a lookout for their programs for fun and educational activities!

"Buloh" = "bamboo", and in all my previous visits to Sungei Buloh during secondary school, I never actually noticed the bamboo plants (bamboo is a kind of grass, not a tree) around the park.  This time we saw 3 kinds just in the vicinity of the visitors' centre and boardwalk alone, thanks to our eagle-eyed guide who put all us youngsters to shame.

Our tour started at the Visitors' Centre and only took us around the boardwalk area, as well as across the Sungei Buloh Besar river to the mud flats where the migratory birds are.  This was the first time I'd been to Sungei Buloh during migration season, so seeing all the birds was beyond exciting!

The longest trail (the red trail) is a 7km round trip!  If you walked to the end, you'd see prawn farms which have been around for decades and are still in use.

The section of Sungei Buloh which our tour covered.

Our friendly guide for the day was Kok Oi Yee, a true veteran in zoology and botany who's been in the field since 1960.  She started out by introducing us to the famous mud lobster mound, a common feature around the whole park that can reach heights of almost 7ft!

Large model of a mud lobster mound at the visitors' centre.

We then started on the boardwalk and were quickly acquainted with the flora and fauna of Sungei Buloh, ranging from kampung plants to stingrays!

Oi Yee points out Torch Ginger, a kampung plant brought in by old settlers.  The flower is starting to bloom now, but hasn't got the characteristic deep red colour yet.

The Beetlenut Leaf covers the flanks of mounds, deliberately grown there to prevent soil erosion.
It's actually a kind of wild pepper, and edible!

Holes in the leaves of the Sea Hibiscus, caused by the Stink Bug.
Don't let the bug near you or the smell will stay on your skin for 2 days...

Tree-climbing crabs!  
Fun fact:  these are the crabs you're eating when you order "soft-shell crab" at a restaurant.  Or sometimes you throw them in a bucket of vinegar and soy sauce for teo chew-style.

Another crab, but I have no idea what species.

Sea holly

As we approached the shore, we saw the changing types of roots of the mangrove trees.  For those who've forgotten their secondary school ecology:  inland there are the pencil roots of the Avicennia and knee roots of the Bruguiera.  Further towards the waters there are the stilt roots of the Rhizophora.

The prop roots are important as fish nurseries, because large predators can't get in between the roots, giving the little fishies a safe place to grow =).

Left: pencil and knee roots
Right: relaxing in a hut next to all the Rhizophora

Flower of the Bruguiera

Chilling with Jasela.

While we were resting in the hut at the midway point of the boardwalk, Oi Yee recounted how the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore (ICCS) started (some of us might remember taking part in it during primary/secondary school).  The ICC is an international effort where on the 3rd Saturday of each September, almost 100 countries worldwide send out contingents of volunteers to clean trash from their coastlines.  

Prior to 1992, the effort in Singapore was not official, and was apparently spearheaded by foreign teachers at our international school!  It was only afterwards that Singaporeans stepped up our own efforts and the Nature Society started running the cleanups every year.  Sometimes "foreign talent" does make a big positive difference :).

A mysterious propped net with a sign that's too small to read.
Leaf-fall experiment perhaps?

Nerita (left) and Algae-eating (right) snails.  All edible.
Next time you're lost in a mangrove, you know what you can eat ;-).

The Ellobium snail, also edible!  Roughly the size of your palm.

The source of ATTAP CHEE.  Om nom nom.

Looking like a giant palm tree stuck in the ground, these are the Nypah palms, locally known as Attap, our source of kampung roofs and attap chee.  

Note that attap chee is actually a gooey tasteless mass that's only sweet because it's boiled in sugar.

Prop/Stilt roots of the Rhizophora.

Did you know the Rhizophora is locally known as "Bakau" (fire)?  This is the origin of wood for charcoal that we use in BBQs!

'Aaahhhhhhh it's an adorable MUDSKIPPER!'

More pictures of cute squishy mudskippers.

White collared kingfisher

This is a picture I'm very proud of.  Because the last time I came and saw a kingfisher, it was too far away for my camera to take.  Now with my awesome 16x zoom camera, I could actually capture it!  Another lady in the tour had a Canon camera with a 20x zoom... I shall keep this in mind for my next camera buy.

Mangrove anemone

Stingray!  (Not sure what kind)

Also for the first time, I saw a mangrove anemone and stingrays!!!!  There were a LOT of them in the water just under the boardwalk, but due to reflections in the water they were quite hard to photograph.  Also in the photo on the right, you can see two little stripey fish things called Half-beaks, which use their protruding lower jaw to eat insects off the surface of the water.

This is why everyone who comes here should have a guide.  Without our guide, we'd just have seen really muddy water.

Squirrel!

Jasela poses with a UFO-looking clump of bamboo (left) and we spot more regular-looking bamboo off in the distance (right).

We had to make our way back to the visitors' centre to get to the mud flats where the migratory birds were, so on the way we passed a bunch of interesting local plants, particularly some which NS boys would be familiar with ;-).

Flower (left) and fruit (right) of the Dillenia plant, also lovingly known as the "CB leaf" =P.

That pink thing is actually a whole bunch of snail eggs!

This is the Singapore Rhododendron, which is neither a rhododendron, nor found only in Singapore.

The scientific name for the Singapore rhododendron is Melastoma.  For mysterious reasons I have a recollection of my secondary school bio teacher calling it a "Pontianak flower" because of the spindly, claw-like anthers, but the internet doesn't agree with me...

That plants growing where the branches meet the trunk of the tree are in fact orchids!  This one is called the Tiger Orchid, because the flowers are yellow with black stripes, but it wasn't flowering so we couldn't get a good look.

SNAKE!

Can you spot it?  In the bright daylight it was really hard to see in the shade of the tree branches.  I think Oi Yee said it was a python, but I was far too excited by the idea of snakes in the wild within reaching distance on our shores to really think about what it was called.

Herons resting on the branches of the mangrove trees.

The view towards JB from the bridge across Sungei Buloh Besar.

Mud flats where the migratory birds were.

We finally reached the mud flats with LOTS OF BIRDS!  I have very sub-quality pictures of them birds because I use a point-and-shoot.  We passed at least 10 avid birdwatchers sporting bazooka lenses that were so big the tripods were attached to the lenses rather than the camera.  They were at least half a meter long. I thought these amazon reviews were a cosmic joke until I saw real people with real lenses trooping through the wetlands in some remote corner of Singapore.  I have been schooled.

Greenshanks!
We could identify them due to a handy chart in the bird-watching hut.  That and my 99x digital zoom and a conveniently-located ledge to prevent my hands from shaking.

These mercifully closer-to-my-camera-so-they-aren't-blur birds are Whimbrels.

Just as we were leaving a big Purple Heron landed on the strip of land near the hut!!!  It was most exciting since they don't show up too often.

Our troop with our lovely guide, Oi Yee.  Thanks for a great tour!

Bird-watching more or less rounded up our tour of Sungei Buloh; we could have walked the extra ~3 km to the tower where one could get a bird's-eye view of the reserve, but we decided we were far too hungry, so went back to the cafe at the visitors' centre for brunch.

A very educational morning, and lots of fun to see nature still thriving in our city which is being rapidly converted to concrete.  Even though this walk by the Toddycats only occurs once a year, the reserve conducts its own FREE guided tours every Saturday, 9.30am.

Catch the migration season before it's over!  

Next up:  Legoland Malaysia!

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Budget!

Entrance fee - $1/pax
Saturday tour - FREE
Pre-booked tours - $60/group of 15

For more information on guided tours: https://www.sbwr.org.sg/events/guidedtours/

Kusu Island - Corals, Temples and Picnic

It's the time of year for Kusu Pilgrimage season!!  Y'all have probably seen it in the papers, but in the lunar 9th month, devotees visit Kusu Island to pay respects to Da Bo Gong (Tua Pek Kong).  My home girls (and guy) decided to become pilgrims for a day last Sunday and check out this southern island which, as Singaporeans, we've embarrassingly never visited in our lives.

Kusu Island ferries are operated by Singapore Island Cruise, and typically only run 3-5 times a day on normal weekends.  However, pilgrimage season sees ferries every half an hour from 7am till 7pm!  A major boon for convenience, for not a lot of cost in terms of crowd.

Ferries leave from Marina South Pier, which is a small, unassuming kind of building with a complete lack of any queue organization or good directional signs.  Since it's new I was quite surprised that it wasn't more happening for tourists, but I guess not that many people really frequent the place anyway:

This is about all there is to see at the pier.

We hopped on a 3pm ferry to Kusu, to reach there just in time for the 4.30pm low tide to go searching for corals.  Kusu island, St Johns island, and the Cyrene Reef Flat, all just south of Singapore, are among the last few city reefs left in the world!  I always thought that our waters were too polluted for corals to survive, but apparently they're still there and thriving, a unique kind of ecosystem that's tolerant of the bustle of a major harbor.

Ferry rides to Kusu take about 20min each way, but because the boats are so small, it's a choppy ride and people prone to sea sickness might want to take tablets before getting on board.  The ride was like a tour through the giant container ships and barges which dot our waters, all awaiting their turn at the port.  We often see them lining the horizon from East Coast and West Coast parks, but you don't get a good scale of just how many there are until you sail among them, or see them from the air.

A seascape of ships from our ferry.

The Kusu Island entrance has a happy, 1980s tropical feel to it!  I really like how it has not been modernized like the rest of mainland, which gives it a more laid-back, resort/getaway atmosphere.  It even has those really old school loudspeakers hung by wire to tree branches, and these act as the island's sole PA system for announcements and music.

Kusu Island is known as the "Tortoise Island" in Chinese or "Peak Island" in Malay.  Prior to 1975, it was just two little outcrops from a reef, and land reclamation in 1975 transformed it into the full island it is today.

Our first stop was to walk through the Tua Pek Kong temple, in hopes of figuring out what the whole pilgrimage was about.  To my ignorant eyes, it looked like any other trip to a temple, but involving a whole lot more traveling.  Nevertheless the temple set by the sea side with its own little lagoon makes it a peaceful oasis compared to our now-urban jungle on mainland.

 Despite being 'peak season', the temple surroundings are still quiet and peaceful.  There was a good breeze that day so the heat wasn't intolerable.

 Left:  The tortoise statue sits across the lagoon from the walkway pictured above.

Right:  Yuxian tries his luck at a lotus wishing well.  There are bells suspended above the well and you'd supposedly have your wish granted if you manage to strike it with a tossed coin.

The entrance to the temple is lined with people selling joss sticks and other forms of incense.  A little terrapin enclosure off to the side houses way too many terrapins for that little space, and you can buy veggies to feed them if you wished.

 I'm still unclear who exactly Da Bo Gong is.  Some sources claim he is a deity of wealth, others claim he was a real person and explorer, so after his death, travelers prayed to him for protection and prosperity...

A wishing tree!  Strips of paper with wishes in all languages can be found on this tree.

We end off with another tortoise statue, and the gate at the opposite end of the temple which leads to a small, seasonal pasar malam (street market).

The aforementioned pasar malam selling all kinds of trinkets, fans and souvenirs, including tortoise magnets and other manner of touristy stuff.

More tortoise enclosures!  The island must live up to its name after all.

We set up shop next to the lagoon opposite the temple and laid out our (very unhealthy) picnic.

Om nom nom.

The view from the lagoon is gorgeous, and you get a very unique view of our new skyline, including MBS and the Singapore Flyer.  It really is strange to think that this rustic island still exists so close to such a sprawling metropolis.

This next section of the post is just going to be one long series of pictures with almost no captions, because I have no idea how to identify these corals and I don't want to be putting wrong information on the web.  If anyone reading this knows how to identify them, please drop a comment and I'll add the info in, ©You!

I didn't modify the picture colors or clarity because I wanted to show how silty our shores are, and just by walking toward the corals, you kick up amazing amounts of sediment which completely obscure your view of them within seconds.  You then need the patience to stand there stock still for almost 10 minutes as the water clears before it's possible to even glimpse them again.

Far more experienced nature and photography enthusiasts like Nature rambles and the Wild Shores blog have breathtaking pictures of what you can see at Kusu at the optimal times, but this blog shows what you're far more likely to see as an amateur during an average low tide.  

Best results are obviously during super low tides known as "spring tides", when the sun and moon are aligned to give the maximum gravitational pull on the water.  Note that this has nothing to do with the season of Spring, rather it means 'spring' as in the bouncy metal thing in your bed.

We walked out onto the beach as the tide was receding, to reveal thousands of shellfish in the shallow water.  I watched with great amusement as Deanna squeaked in terror when she discovered that these shells were, in fact, alive and moving.

Crab!  It looks to me like a female Fiddler crab but I'm just smoking here.

 Deanna, Weichao, Yuxin and Yuxian wade gingerly around the reefs...

  My guidebook says this is Padina sp., a type of brown algae.

Just random boulder corals.

This was my first ever time using an underwater camera!  I bought a Ricoh PX after going snorkeling in Hawaii and being very disappointed about not having a camera which could capture the amazing reefs there. I still don't have a good grasp on focus and color, but at least it's better than the disposable film kind :).

Brains?  Macaroni?

  

I want to say... sponges.  They look incredibly pink and squishy, but I really have no clue.

More squishy yellow stuff.

City reefs!  

Corals in the water with a city skyline in the background, one of the few places on Earth you can get such a shot!

Jasela and I pose in the water with the skyline in the background.  It never occurred to me to wipe my camera lens after taking it out of the water -_-".

  

A whole field of some sort of sea grass, swaying in the waves.

More shellfish (left), and I believe that's sargassum (right), a kind of seaweed.

I was very happy to be nearing dry land again after being thigh-deep in the water for more than an hour trying not to step on corals.

Danger!  Oh, this must be why the life guards kept blowing that whistle when we were attempting to climb on the breakwater.  Our bad.

  

A glorious sunset.

Finishing up that picnic to dramatic lighting with cheese and wine juice.

We caught the last ferry off the island at 7pm, and we kind of just floated at the pier for a long while as the staff walked around the island to round up stragglers.  It was actually a big ferry this time with an open deck on top, which made for a very cooling, relaxing, and most importantly seasick-free ride home.

Well, our boat was not very environmentally friendly, but it only puffed black smoke once...

I hope more people will take the opportunity to go explore the reefs at our Southern Islands before they slowly disappear as our climate changes, the corals get bleached and our harbor gets more silty.  They are such beautiful, fascinating creations, and to see them out in nature compared to at the Underwater World or a random aquarium is a very different and humbling experience.  

I hope to some day make it to St Johns Island, where the NUS Marine Science Institute is.  I've heard rumors that it may not be there for much longer, so this must happen soon!  There you can get a tour of the aquariums within the institute, as well as of the surrounding coral reefs and mangroves - probably one of the last few authentic Nature experiences you can get in SG these days.

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Budget!

Round trip ferry - $15/pax (during pilgrimage season, $16 on weekends, $14 on weekdays)