After 6 long months, I finally got to venture out to the rainforest again last Saturday. The most recent trip was to the Mandai area on 23 November last year. After such a long break, I was full of anticipation for this trip and really hoped to see something interesting. I chose to go to the Tree Top Walk Trail since I had quite a bit of time on that day.

The finding of the day was a black leaf-rolling weevil (family Attelabidae) with 2 large orange spots on its back. This was the 6th leaf-rolling weevil in my collection. Like the rest of the leaf-rolling weevils, it was a tiny and strange-looking insect.

Before the leaf-rolling weevil, I had come across three longhorn beetles known as Xylotrechus javanicus. The "horn" or antennae of this species was actually rather short when compared to most other longhorn beetles in my series. Nearing the entrance to the tree-top bridge, I spotted another type of longhorn beetle, Xoanodera trigona. There were 2 of them napping on separate leaves from the same plant. The final longhorn beetle sighted on this trip was seen by the side of the boardwalk after the tree-top bridge. This was a new longhorn beetle (Oberea clara) in my pictorial collection.

Two of this baby Wagler's Pit Viper (Tropidolaemus wagleri) were spotted by the side of the boardwalk after the tree-top bridge. This snake was common around this area but was not easy to spot due to the good camouflage offered by its skin colour and pattern.

On the plant side, there were few flowering or fruiting plants within my reach. One that interest me was a fruiting Calophyllum species located next to the tree-top bridge, which I suspected may be a Calophyllum pulcherrimum. Unfortunately, due to the heavy human traffic on a typical weekend, the bridge was shaking all the time. On top of that, it was tough to pause for too long on the narrow bridge to take pictures when there was a queue behind waiting for you to give way. If I had a choice, I would not have chosen to take the walk on a weekend. Singapore had become a very crowded place in the last few years and the situation is probably getting worse --- even the forest trails were not spared of this predicament.

Except for the Clidemia capitellata shared last week, there was no other noteworthy finding on the plant side. Nevertheless, the overwhelming little creatures among the greens compensated for this gap. Below was another sampling (right to left): Treehugger Dragonfly (Tyriobapta torrida), Crane fly, Diamond-bellied crab spider (Angaeus rhombifer), Net-winged beetle (Taphes brevicollis), Nymph of katydid and Large fruit flies.