Waking up early in the morning, I was looking forward to my nature walk at Windsor Nature Park, a nature park that I have not yet visited before. Sadly, as I was arriving at the nature park, rain clouds came in and it started to drizzle. In our WhatsApp group, the guides informed us that they have to cancel or reschedule the walk due to the current weather conditions. I was upset that I may have made a wasted trip to the park but thankfully, our experienced guides, Sean and James, informed us that the rain clouds may pass soon and offered to continue the walk if we desired. Whilst most of the group was unable to join us, I and another BFF-er along with Sean and James met up at the park and begin our entomology trail when the rain stopped and the sun came up at 9am.
Whilst many people, including myself, would have thought that after a rain shower, there would be lesser people and fauna at the park, I was pleasantly surprised to see many bees already flying out to collect nectar from the radiant flowers. During our short trail along the Venus Loop, we managed to spot many species of insects including snails, beetles, flies, caterpillars, and many other tiny insects that were just relaxing or moving about on leaves and wood stumps.
Even though the trail was relatively short in distance, we took our time to spot the many tiny insects around us – those that were openly moving on the leaves and fungi-filled stump, those hidden under the leaves and those just actively flying around and “working”.
As someone who never really took the time to observe insects, and at times even afraid of some of them, I managed to learn quite a lot from my experienced guides, who were experts in their own fields of entomology. Thanks to their sharp eyes and extensive knowledge of insects, we were able to find different species of insects at every turn, sometimes even at every step, and I learnt little bits of knowledge about each of the new species of insect that we saw.
I learnt that there were actually many insects who liked to imitate other insects as a form of protection. An example would be a harmless fly pretending to be a dangerous wasp. Ironic how the fly would be bolder than the wasp when we approach it – while the fly will remain still as we edge closer to it, the wasp will fly away at our slightest advancements. Perhaps imitating a dangerous species in the insect kingdom has made these flies bolder and less affected by us humans.
Apart from insects, we also saw other bigger animals such as chickens, plantain squirrels and even a huge wild boar who was just casually crossing the trail and trotting into the forest.
We also saw a few rare insects and habitats on our trail – a huge green tree snail that typically comes out at night, a massive termite mound with thousands and thousands of termites at work, and a natural freshwater habitat inhabited by tiny fish and water bugs.
Overall, I learned a lot from this 3hr walk around the Venus Loop. I learned many new facts about different species and insects and even some tips on how to spot and identify them. One key new fact that I learned from my guides is that there are many species of insects in the world, so much so that they cover half of the animal kingdom that we know, but while there are so many species of insects, there are still so little that we know about them – why they behave in certain manners and even what some species of insects are as many are still unnamed. This is why museums are constantly finding research material from citizens so that they can find out more about the insects we see and hopefully provide better protection and conservation for some of the endangered insects.
This walk started on a low with rainy weather but ended with a high with me leaving with new knowledge and mindsets about insects. Can’t wait for my third and final BFF trip!
BFF Biodiversity Challenge 2022 