I saw not one, but two of these last week. The first was soaring above the trees, then suddenly dive-bombed something in mid-air (maybe a bird, but I didn’t see anything in its claws afterwards), then rose high up again and flapped away. Then its friend flapped out from behind a tree, and IT dive-bombed […]
I saw a pair of these high up near the top of the jungle trees. They took turns swooping around catching bugs, and then visiting their nest hole in the tree trunk. Probably feeding their babies. They’re called dollarbirds because when they’re flying, from below you can see light blue dollar-sized patches on the dard […]
This morning I had a little extra time to walk through the garden and take some pictures. They’re not an exhaustive show of all the kinds of plants in the garden, but might give you an idea of what Chinese gardening aesthetics can do with a lot of space and a tropical rainforest climate. Here’s […]
A bus stop in Singapore is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Or at least a place of shelter from sun and rain, and cleanliness, with polished marble benches to sit on and bollards. The bollards were added last spring after some bad driver in the city speeded and ran off the road […]
The pangolin is an ant-eating mammal with keratin scales all over its body – the only keratin-coated mammal there is. They are toothless nocturnal creatures that can curl themselves into tight balls. Sort of southeast Asia’s answer to the armadillo. I’ve seen pictures and sculptures of these creatures, but didn’t really believe they existed in […]