When: February 2015 Weather: Cool, 25C
Having a break from my travels, I finally found the time to go to the Mangrove boardwalk in Pasir Ris Park. 10pm to around 1 am is a pretty good time to go as the tide is coming in, bringing some interesting things along…whilst we were looking for snakes primarily, it was a surprisingly fruitful evening for other fauna….

The night was getting a bit quiet with nothing much stirring when J spotted this beauty, roosting in the low branches just a few feet up from the mangrove floor…it was a sleeping Tailor Bird! Birders will know that the Tailor bird is a very active bird flitting around the bushes and very difficult to get nice pictures of…

I had expected him to wake up and fly off when I started shooting him with my macro camera and flash up close…but he just opened his eyes….

This was so unusual…to shoot a bird who was so cooperative…and with a macro lens at that! This was such a special moment…

and then a sad sight…this poor eel had been stranded as the tide went out much earlier and had perished

And then J found this tiny little snake…the crab eating water snake, the second of 4 species of water snake found in Pasir Ris Park.

And the final highlight of the night…the largest praying mantises I’ve ever seen before….here the male..

Close up, we can see that the right antenna is broken and we can also see where the Alien movies got their inspiration from!
Sometimes, it’s nice to see what my local nature parks have…surprising Singapore indeed!
Grreat post