Earth Day

22-23 April 2006

Being a day especially dedicated to the celebration of nature on earth, it's only befitting for me to celebrate over the weekend with trips to the great (yes, I actually think we can describe nature in S'pore as great) outdoors.

T and I enjoyed a rainforest tour at Botanic Garden. By the end of it, we were enlightened as to how to identify a primary forest (fig/banyan tree and the existence of a kind of tree with perfect stripes across its leaf) and what is needed to give nature a helping hand and prevent it from becoming 'botak'. But the trip is also memorable for the wrong reason. I've forgotten my lesson and forgot to bring my repellent - a fatal mistake as the mosquitoes in BG are only second to the kamikaze army at Ubin.


Sunday saw a happier trip to Khatib Bongsu, which I had visited eons again with Z (how r u???). We had a propitious start with the sounds of a koel (?) , kingfisher (!), sighting of a woodpecker (!!) and a raptor's gigantic nest (!!!). Wonder how the bird gets back to its home.... crashlanding is inevitable... even if it occupies the highest of the trees (even many of our trees are immigrants from somewhere else... Australia and Panama???)

But the most enduring imprint of the trip was looking through the fieldscope at the dollar bird. (don't see the $ sign anywhere) . It was so powerful that the image is a high-resolution, enlarged copy of the real McCoy. As WT said, you can see the bird smiling at you!

I could update 'birdwatching' under 'Hobbies' in my biodata but ......
let's wait for money to buy the binoculars first.......

But maybe a trip to search for my 'love' - snakies. Happy to get reacquainted with Ben again. Will be waiting for his call to search for nocturnal reptiles of Singapore this coming May...

or maybe Kym's dogsnake-catching trip will come up first...

anticipation......