101222 Chestnut avenue area

A wonderful night of magical moments befitting the season of Christmas, when Agamids were tame beyond belief and ordinary moths reveal an awesome spectacle.


Pink fungal fruiting bodies.


Carabidae?




Fungus beetles?


Chun Fong made the first find of the night, this beautiful yet tiny tiger beetle (Cicindelinae). It was about 1 cm long.


And a little later, she spotted this phasmid. Orestes (mouhotii?).


A moment of delight, a harvestman (Opiliones) feeding on a severed mushroom cap.


Crushed forest cockroach?


Jumping spider (Salticidae) with large jaws, Viciria sp.?


Mallinella cinctipes is quite a customary sighting at our CCA.


Chun Fong spotted this Deinopis, finally one in plain view and easily accessed.


Hairy Sparassid.


Chestnut avenue is the place to find crickets and grasshoppers. Multitudes line the path. This is one I don't think I have seen before.


A really huge katydid spotted by Chun Fong, about 8-9 cm long. I think that white patch above the eye is the lateral foveola.


A rather unusual millipede, or so I think it is kindly identified as a sucking millipede by flickr user tasmilli:
"See the sharply pointed beak between the antennae? This makes the animal a sucking millipede in one of the two orders Polyzoniida and Siphonophorida. The quick way to tell these two orders apart is to look for dark eyespots near the bases of the antennae: Polyzoniida have eyes, Siphonophorida don't. Since this one is in Singapore, my guess is Siphonophorida. A wild guess would be a species in the genus Siphonorhinus, which is widespread in your region.".


We decided to try a new path tonight, moving to the west side.

This mantis (Tropidomantis?) nymph on the barrier post was doing some strange gymnastics.


More normal posture.


Longhorn beetle spotted by Chun Fong. She had a keen eye for Cerambycids and spotted a really tiny one as well, about 5 mm long.


Bird shit weevil.


The earwigs here seem to be not shy at all as opposed to the ones at Venus drive. Many of them could be found along the path.


Freshly molted katydid spotted by Chun Fong.


Tetrigidae (groundhopper, grouse locust, pygmy locust). Many small ones could be seen crawling on rotting logs as well.


There was this small plant with many of these flies on it. The flies were found no where else along the path. Quite odd.


Limoniidae with at least 3 mites on it.


Chun Fong spotted these strange waxy white stuff under leaves. There were quite a few of them and they seem to occur in pairs although there were some solitary ones as well. Some sort of mealybug/eggs?


Whip spider (Argyrodes/Ariamnes).


Many of these strange worms similar to those found at the usual Chestnut avenue path could be seen here as well.


This gliding lizard (Draco sp.) is the tamest ever lizard I have encountered. I think it is a juvenile and only 10 cm from nose to the tip of its tail.


But it was only after processing the photos did I realise it was squatting on something special as well, a Tingid bug.


The plant where both were found, kindly identified by Joseph Lai as a wild pepper plant Piper sarmentosum.


These ordinary looking moths were everywhere. They seem to hang out under leaves sticking out their abdomens. Yet what they were up to was simply fascinating.






I have absolutely no idea what these moths were doing and what that was coming out of the abdominal tip but itTiny moth with its eversible scent organ out releasing pheromones. It was one of the best things I have seen on a nature trip yet. More information in Siyang's excellent post.






And all too soon it ends. Half a minute of magic.