Who's the One Croaking?

I was having a night walk along a canal beside my old house one night. My main intention was to admire some bats. As I walked, I came across Night Herons that were too far away to shoot, colonies of bats and... Toads. There were a huge number of toads croaking in the field beside, in the drain and on the footpath. I decided to just shoot a couple of these croaking-mad toads as I could shoot nothing else.

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This guy looks like he's posing and saying 'Cheese!' Look at his eyes, they look like they are filled with tears of joy.

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'What is my future?'

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Finally after searching for a few minutes I spotted the not-so-common white form. However, this one was much smaller, about one third of the size of the one that I saw before, at the same exact spot.

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A Common Summer Visitor

The Slender Skimmer is a common visitor to our school's water bodies during May and June. Before I was in this school, my Seniors used to say that there was a giant green dragon that wiped out all other dragonflies from the area. However they had no photographs to show. This time, I came face to face with the fierce dragon, the Slender Skimmer.

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I didn't really find photographing this creature that difficult. It was not too shy and would stay at its spot no matter how close I came. I went up towards its front and took a shot of its head. Just as I was to move my camera away, it flew slightly forward and attempted to grab my finger! Luckily I did not drop my camera or it would have gone into the water. Wow, really, this dragonfly is very aggressive and was noticed to try grabbing and fly that flew nearby. No wonder all the Dawn Dropwings have vanished from the area.

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We would have been having him and his sons and daughters for a pretty long time. This is definitely not the last time I post about this dragonfly.

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Different Colour Forms of Agriocnemis femina

I have posted before about the damselflies found in my school, Agriocnemis femina. They come in a number of colours. Here is one of them that has a small blue patch on it's back.

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Here's another colour form, the red. I'm not sure what has happened to these photos. The background seems to have turned weird. Makes it look like an old photo. Now if you look at my earlier posts, most of my macro shots turn out this way. What's happening?

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Mummy Bulbul in her Nest

For long I had been trying to capture shots of the common Yellow-Vented Bulbul that is commonly seen in my school. But as usual I could not get them with my 3X Optical Zoom Camera. I decided to sneak up to a nest during a break and check the mother bird would be there. In many attempts, only the nest was to be seen; no birds, no babies, no eggs. But finally one time, I stood behind the bushy plant and looked inside the nest. Bingo! The mother was there, and just in the nick of time, I captured a shot of it sitting on its nest.

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I only took one shot as the flash, although quite soft, had disturbed her a little. Hoping that it would not freak out an abandon its nest, I left immediately.

Succesful Dragonfly Breeding

I've seriously been doing a lot of dragonfly hunting lately. Well as I still have my Dragonfly project going on, I had to go check everyday at the CTW for dragonflies and their moulted nymph skins. I'd never been able to spot an moulted skins, though... till one day. So that shows that the Dawn Dropwings have succesfully been breeding in iur CTW, despite the number of tilapia in there. Well here are some of my best shots of the newly-emerged dragonflies. They were so gentle that they just stood there for me to shoot them. Here are the females.

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Now it's only fair if I add shots of the males too...
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This guy's enjoying the breeze.

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Dragonfly Hunt at Sungei Buloh

As usual more trips from my school were on the way. On one particular trip to Sungei Buloh, our main intention was to shoot Dragonflies. We were given special DSLRs with zoom lens for shooting them. I asked for the Canon EOS 40D but ended up getting an Olympus EVOLT E-520. I thought it wasn't too bad though. I started shooting whatever I could find. I spotted a Crimson Sunbird basking in the sunlight but it flew off before I could get close enough to shoot it. Soon I managed to spot and shoot a number of dragonflies with the 100-400mm lens. But however, the results were not that satisfying. Firstly a Reddish Brown one.

A pretty large Blue.

One which has its abdomen bright red. I used to see many of these in India but they were extremely hard to photograph as they will fly off at the slightest movement. So, I only managed one shot, a very bad one.

A Blue Sprite Damselfly.

A fully-coloured Bright Red.

I managed one good shot with this one. The first shot I took was pretty poor quality but I was really happy with the second one.

Yippy! So I did manage to do well with a DSLR! Well yes just one.

A Hidden Beast High Up the Tree

It's been nearly 2 months since I last posted anything. This was because I had to wait for a friend of mine, Thomas, to send me his photos of... the snake! Well, I'm going to rush through my next few posts as I seriously have a lot more to post. We finally got a glimse of what the snake was. We looked high up the tree and found out that it was a Reticulated Python, about 2 metres in length.

My Camera with an optical zoom of 3X was no use in trying to take shots of this snake that was about 15 metres high up the tree. I had to call Thomas, mt friend to bring his camera, a Canon EOS 450D to shoot it. However, he only had a 18-55mm lens and so it we still could not get clear shots of the python.

Here's a badly cropped shot of the snake.

The snake, unfortunately was not left alone. The West Coast Park Managers had called the Pest Control Services to get rid of the snake. Isn't this stupid?! The python which is only about 2 metres can merely do any harm to adult humans, and it also helps to keep real pests like rats in control. But it looks like the 'Pest Controllers' are actually getting rid of the Real Pest Controller. I took a poor video with my digital camera of the snake being pushed into the pond from high up the tree. Poor Snake.