Archive for Animals

Bali: Ubud’s Sacred Monkey Reserve

Monkey Forest Road in Ubud terminates at the Monkey Forest Reserve – well actually it doesn’t terminate, but joins Jalan Hanoman (the monkey hero of the Ramayana) and swings back into town.  But at this southern end of the town you can enter the reserve, paying a modest price to do so, and with the […]

Bali: Rural life

These are cheery Balinese cows, in their little shelter about 50 feet from the beach. All the cattle we saw were these smallish red ones. There are little huts all up and down the precipitous slopes of East Bali, and I think they just move the cows to the ones with the lushest grass every […]

Singapore Birds: Black Bazas!

I saw at least four of these this morning on my walk. Apparently they’re migrating south from Thailand – unless they’re locals, but I’d never seen them before.  They’re in the area where the dollarbirds were nesting back when I posted about them.   Anyway, the feathers on the crests are very cute and floppy. […]

Pigs Take Over Dorms

This morning I saw an infant wild pig meandering calmly around one of the students’ residence halls at NTU.  I was all excited, of course, and stopped a passing jogger to share the wonders of nature with her.  She seemed unimpressed: “There are many wild pigs here.”  After she ran off, I watched, and the […]

Chinese Gardens: Confucius and water monitor

The Singapore Unitarians, that small but doughty band, met for a tour of the Chinese and Japanese gardens this morning. I have lots of pictures of statues that I’ll post separately, but here were some highlights: This is the big Confucius statue towards the southern end of the garden, complete with a couple of dragon-y […]

Lizard photo

At least the YOG fence gives the lizards a place to hang out.  I like its long toes.

Our neighbors: Parcur snails!

I was walking between downpours this morning, and saw a lot of snails climbing the YOG fence. Here are the approaches of 3 of them: Who says you need opposable thumbs to grasp objects?

Ant Architecture

The little guys have been busy; this sand castle wasn’t there yesterday.  In fact, it poured rain yesterday, so this structure dates from sometime last evening.  Not bad!

Our neighbors: Very Large Snails

To see the scale of this bad boy, I took a picture of him next to my shoe.  My toes are about 4 inches across. Anybody for escargot?

Our neighbors: Chrysalis??

This thing caught my eye this morning; it was attached to the evil YOG fugly fence, and it wiggled, although there was no breeze.  I’m pleasantly surprised by the quality of the picture – although fully caffeinated, I didn’t shake when pressing the shutter. Something was emerging from the top end, and if you look […]