Last Saturday, I did a side trip to a park in Woodlands area. Plants in the park were well trimmed and cut except for a small area that had a small but thick mangrove vegetation with a stream that run into the sea. The land was probably a mangrove before the park was constructed. Needless to say, this is the area that I was keen to explore. The last time I came along was in November 2013. Since it was a well maintain park, I did not expect any extraordinary discovery. Sadly, the stream hidden in the vegetation was full of rubbish that flow with the water from upstream. As the water was constantly on the move, there was no foul smell emitted besides the unsightly mess.

The plant species that dominated the stream area was Sea Hibiscus (Talipariti tiliaceum). On it, I found 2 lone ants that were new to me. One had a black colour head and abdomen but dark orange colour thorax. At that instance, I was actually not certain whether it was indeed an ant or the ant-mimicking jumping spider (Myrmarachne formicaria). To my delight after examined the picture later, it was an ant, probably Tetraponera rufonigra. The second solitary ant was much smaller and totally black in colour. It was really hard to get good pictures of it since it was constantly on the move and its tiny size did not offer much help. This one was likely to be a Cataulacus recticulatus.

Besides the ants, the other creature seen on the Sea Hibiscus was the Pythia snail, Pythia plicata. At least 4 of them were seen napping on the trees in an isolated area. One of them even had a sleeping partner, a Rusty Millipede (Trigoniulus corallinus). This snail is only found in mangroves.

I happened to take some pictures of an unknown dragonfly. Despite searching through my reference books and the Internet, there was no clue on its identity. Nevertheless, I did find two types of familiar caterpillars (Common Bluebottle and Common Mime) on the leaves of the Wild Cinnamon (Cinnamomum iners). All the caterpillars were still relatively young and fresh eggs were still found on some of the leaves. Along the way, I even managed to snap some pictures of a cicada (Purana usnani), which was normally a very alert insect.

In all, I spent about 2 hours before I had to leave to attend an appointment. I am likely to return soon as I will be around the area more often in the next few months.