May 3rd, 2005
After coming back from Bali, we returned to exploring our immediate surroundings. Here on the island is a Wetland Reserve, and nature classroom. It's located up in the North, and is unfortunatly not the easiest place to get to, but once you are there, you really could spend an entire day exploring the wetlands and mangrove swamps. There is an interpretive center and lots of easy trails to explore. We'll have to go back at least once more, as our day was only half of what it should be, AND we had a really big Thunderstorm and pouring rain about halfway in. Not to mention the mosquitos!

Since we went on a Saturday, we had to take the MRT to the Woodlands stop and the get on bus 925 that would take us to the Kranji Resevoir car park. From there, we had to walk about 20 mins to get to the entrance of the reserve. If we had come on Sunday or it was a public holiday, we could take the bus all the way to the entrance, but then we would've missed this...

On our way we saw this:




A crocodile farm, not too far away from the entrance of the reserve.

When we started our walk in, we followed this boardwalk made of recycled wood. And sitting there in the middle was this coppery colord lizard, with part of his tail missing. He's about 6 inches long.



And hidden back in the brush, we saw this lizard hiding.


We kept seeing these structures in the mud, lots of them, here and there. After a visit to the nature center, we learned that they were made by mudlobsters, although we did not see any mudlobsters.

Mudlobster hole


A wet plant. It looked pretty cool at the time.

And when we started our exploration of the area, we decided to take the boardwalk trail out to see the mangroves. This is some of what we saw.

These are Prop roots of Rhizophora. They were all over the place and it was quite eerie to see them all around you. It was low tide, so more of the roots were exposed at this time.


It's hard to see, but there are two mudskippers and evidence of a mudlobster hole in this pix.

Mudskippers are interesting critters. They swim and breathe underwater like fish, and in fact have fins, but they are also able to breathe out of water, and use their fins to drag them selves up onto land. They also have big bulging eyes, that sit on top of their heads so they can see what's going on when they are submerged underwater. They were fascinating too watch, and fun to look for the biggest one we could find, which was about 8 inches in length.


Once we finished the mangrove boardwalk section of trail, we headed out to the rest of the wetland area and as we came across this bridge and turned Left, we were met with this sign showing us to be aware of Crocodiles on trail.


You can see the trail was a pretty easy one to follow and wide enought to spot any on coming crocs!


And along the trail they had built these observation blinds so you could see the birds and wildlife without disturbing them. OK, so Jeremy is wearing the sling, b/c he had a huge crash on his bike earlier this particular morning, OK, well, there were two crashes and he got some good road rash, but the worst of it, was that he really wretched his shoulder. He's not wearing a sling anymore, but his shoulder is still giving him problems...and the road rash is all but gone now. Cool scars though!


A view out to the wetland and the birds from behind one of the observation blinds. We learned that the best time to visit SB would be October- January, as migratory birds use this reserve as a winter stop over. We would like to come back and check it out then, and see how many birds will be there. It's supposed to be an amazing site.


While Jeremy uses the observation blinds to view wildlife, I use the surroundings. This plant was wild, it looked like something you would buy at Walmart in the fake plant section, but no, it was real!


...and we ended up on another boardwalk, where we continued to look for big mudskippers and saw millions of these tiny, I mean, about a half and inch long, crabs that if you just looked quickly, scanning the mudflats, you would miss them ,but if you stop, and really look, they were everywhere! And as we looked up in the trees....


HUGE Monitor Lizard, just hanging out in the trees! He didn't even move much when we stayed to check him out for a while. It's just too hot in Singapore to move. He proves it!

And after we saw the Moniter lizard, we ran into a road block on the boardwalk, so we had to turn around and head back to another trail juncture. But, part way back, we got caught in a massive Thunderstorm and downpour, so we made our way quickly to the Aeerie, which was an observation tower, for shelter. We hung out there and watched many more monitor lizards, from afar begin moving about the mudflats as small pools began to fill. It was starting to get late, so we decided to brave the rain anyway (we did snag an umbrella from one of our busses so we had one between us) and made our way back to the visitor center. We were able to catch a short flick about the reserve (more of a promotional thing) and on our way back out of the reserve we saw these two huge monitor lizards swimming near the visitor center.


Monitor lizard swimming at the visitor center. Monitor lizards tend to stand up on their hind legs and just keep their heads above the waters surface to see what's going on. But, they are very good swimmers. We'll have to go back and visit the reserve again.

© December 6, 2008