Despite living a stone’s throw away from Dairy Farm Nature Park, I have to admit that I have only ever walked the Wallace Trail once since it was extended two years ago. So I was pretty excited to see what this park had to offer, especially with Nasry, Zachary and Eugene, who were somewhat well-acquainted with it. It was a truly enriching walk, as I saw and learnt about so many interesting things!

Birds

Thanks to our guides and their cameras, we were able to spot and identify quite a number of birds that I have never seen before, such as the scarlet-backed flowerpecker, olive-winged bulbul, emerald dove and blue-winged leaf bird. The ones that stuck in my memory, however, were actually the more ‘common’ birds that Nasry shared some interesting stories about. For instance, the pink-necked green pigeon has a muscular gizzard and in some individuals, this gizzard contains grit, used to grind and digest seeds. So rather than dispersing these seeds, they actually destroy them! 

Other than that, I learnt that greater racket-tailed drongos practise something known as ‘kleptoparasitism’. They are able to imitate the calls of other birds, and sometimes use this to their advantage by stealing prey from other foraging birds. When these birds capture a prey, the drongo makes an alarm call mimicking one of their predators to frighten them away, allowing it to swoop down and steal the food. How smart!

Apart from bird facts, I also learnt more about bird-watching practices from our guides. It may seem obvious, but one thing I learnt was that birds will tend to visit flowering or fruiting trees, which is why bird-watchers can often be seen lying in wait in front of these trees, ready to get a perfect shot. I really admire their patience – I do not think that I could ever do that!

Mammals

As for the mammals we saw, there was an abundance of long-tailed macaques, but the most interesting find for me was a slender squirrel! The only species of squirrel that I have ever recognised locally is the very common plantain squirrel, so I was quite excited when our guides pointed this slender squirrel out. Slender squirrels are smaller and have less bushy tails than plantain squirrels, and lack a black and white stripe on the side of their bodies. While their habitat is limited to primary and secondary forests, they are apparently quite common in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, Central Catchment Nature Reserve, Singapore Botanic Gardens and Bukit Batok Nature Park. I think it is quite likely that I have encountered one before, but did not recognise it!

Insects

I think one of my biggest takeaways from the walk was that beyond the more ‘obvious’ wildlife sightings like birds or mammals, there is so much more that we can see and observe if we stop to take a closer look. Our guides pointed out so many small but fascinating insects and even told us more about their behaviour, which was super interesting. The assassin bug, for example, gets its name from the fact that it uses its proboscis to stab and kill its prey. And the tiger beetle (which is super pretty) can run so fast that its eyes cannot keep up and it has to stop to recalibrate before zooming off again. While I definitely would not call myself an insect lover any time soon, it did amaze me how beautiful many of the ones we saw today were, especially when we could see them up close as they were photographed by our guides.

(Photos by Eugene)

We also saw plenty of butterflies on our walk, and two of the most memorable for me were the common mormon and the banded demon, because of their interesting names! Apparently the common mormon is named as such because (human) mormons used to practise polygamy, and (butterfly) mormon females have different appearances in different regions. That was interesting.

(Photos by Eugene)

Plants

There was also a lot to learn about the plants and trees that we saw at Dairy Farm. Our guides explained to us the difference between mature and disturbed forests, where mature forests would have greater species diversity. This is (I think?) because in disturbed forests, there is lower canopy cover and more sunlight can penetrate through, allowing fast-growing understory species to overtake the area before other species can grow. We also learnt about various different plant and tree species, such as: 

• The fan palm, whose leaves are used to make ketupat.
• The sea almond, a pagoda-shaped coastal tree that has almond-shaped fruits. Its leaves are often used in aquariums as they release tannin, which can promote fish health Apparently it is also called the traffic light tree because its large leaves turn yellow, orange, then red, before dropping. My question was: why was a coastal species like the sea almond found here? To that, Nasry replied that in a small island like Singapore, it is easy for seeds to be dispersed from the coast inland. Interesting!
• The pagoda plant, a butterfly-attracting plant with beautiful flowers.
• The dumb cane or mother-in-law plant, which is named as such because of its toxic sap that can cause speech loss if ingested.
• The leaf litter or kiasu plant, an understory species that grows its leaves in a spiral so that it can trap and extract nutrients from fallen leaves.
• The macaranga tree, which has large, three-lobed leaves and which has a symbiotic relationship with ants. While its hollow young twigs provide homes for ants, the ants protect the tree from being eaten by other insects.
• The banyan tree, which is a parasitic plant as it grows on an existing tree, smothering and taking nutrients from it. Despite this, it is actually a keystone species as it is an important food source for many animals. It also has an obligate relationship with wasps, which are their pollinators – each fig species is pollinated by a specific wasp species.

Writing all this has made me realise how much I learnt during the walk! All in all, it was a fruitful and fascinating morning walk, as we not only spotted lots of interesting flora and fauna, but also got to learn interesting facts about them thanks to our knowledgeable guides. I will definitely be back here in the future!

For me, the opportunity to go on an intertidal walk was one of the reasons why I had signed up for the BFF Challenge in the first place. Although I was really interested in exploring the intertidal zone, the guided walks I had encountered were all too expensive for a student like me. So, I was really happy that on the 14th of April, I was able to go on my first ever intertidal walk with Young Nautilus at Changi Beach! It was a really fun and enriching experience, which made the long journey to and from Changi Beach truly worth it. 

From what I know, many intertidal walks are conducted in the wee hours of the morning, so I was relieved that this one was in the afternoon – I could take my time to travel over to Changi Beach Carpark 6. There, I met up with the other BFF-ers as well as our guides Yong Jen and Leon, and soon, we were on our way down into the intertidal zone, where there was no shortage of flora and fauna to be found! 

First, we saw sand dollars buried in the sand, along with different sea cucumbers like the pink warty sea cucumber and the thorny sea cucumber. Yong Jen shared with us that sand dollars, sea cucumbers and sea stars are all related in that they are all echinoderms with pentaradial symmetry. This means that their body parts are arranged along five axes of symmetry. For me, it was really cool to see what I had learnt in the (virtual) classroom come to life, as I had learnt about the different animal phyla and their characteristics in a biology module this semester!

As we walked further out and our guides introduced us to more and more marine creatures, one thing that took me by surprise was the way in which the walk was conducted. Young Nautilus had prepared baskets in which they displayed marine creatures that they had presumably found earlier, and these formed ‘stations’ that our guides would bring us to in order to introduce the creatures to us. While I felt that it would have been more exciting to find the animals ourselves rather than having them presented to us in a container, I guess that would lower the likelihood of us being able to see so many things, and would mean less opportunities for learning. In the future though, I would love to explore the intertidal zone on my own, once I have learnt enough about the different creatures I can find there.

Apart from the sand dollars and sea cucumbers, we saw many other interesting creatures, such as an onch slug, a dead sea jelly and a burrowing moon crab with paddle-like legs. We also saw a broken sand collar, which I learnt is the egg mass of a moon snail, made of mucus and sand.

One of the most fascinating-looking creatures we encountered was the sea pen, named for its resemblance to a quill. It is actually a colony of different kinds of polyps connected to one another, and on this particular sea pen, there was a brittle star and porcelain crab! I learnt that porcelain crabs are not true crabs, as they have three instead of four pairs of walking legs. Other examples of ‘crabs’ which are not true crabs are horseshoe crabs and hermit crabs, which only have two pairs of walking legs. 

And speaking of hermit crabs, one thing that I somehow only learnt during this field trip was that we should not pick up and bring home the seashells we find on the beach. Although they are not living things, these ‘seashells’, which are mostly the calcium carbonate outer coverings of dead mollusks like clams and snails, are important to coastal and marine ecosystems. They provide homes for hermit crabs, and when they break down, they provide calcium carbonate for other organisms that build their own hard outer coverings. This is definitely something that I will take note of the next time I visit a beach, and I hope to remind my friends and family about this too.

Other than the interesting animals in the intertidal zone, there was also a lot of seaweed, which led me to ponder the differences between seaweed and algae. Yong Jen shared that seaweed are actually macroalgae, which means that they are large and visible to the naked eye (I think!). He also pointed out that they are different from seagrass, which are vascular plants with roots, stems and leaves. Although seagrass was not as abundant at this part of the beach, I was quite excited to pick up a few leaves, as I had never seen seagrass before! I had learnt about seagrass and the important ecosystem services they provide in another module this semester, so it was super cool to encounter seagrass for the first time.

After about one and a half hours of walking around and squatting to look at marine creatures, our exploration ended on a high note, as we saw a rare moon-headed sidegill slug before leaving the beach. Although I was not able to fully appreciate the rarity of this sighting, I marvelled at its beautiful colours and patterns. It was a great way to end the walk!

All in all, it was a super fruitful first intertidal experience for me, and I will definitely be visiting the intertidal zone again soon. Thanks for reading!