lotus growing in the wild (in singapore)
some other untamed places in singapore
not many people are aware that there are wild boars on mainland singapore because very few people have seen them. wild boars tend to be more active between dusk and dawn, so the chances of seeing one in the day is very rare except on the outlying islands of pulau ubin and pulau tekong. with pulau tekong being designated as a military area, the only place where people may meet up with a wild boar is pulau ubin. we saw two wild boars when we made a trip to chek jawa in december last year.
the first time when i saw four or five wild boars on mainland singapore one evening, i had imagined that my eyes were playing tricks on me. i dismissed it, telling myself that they could have been stray dogs. but when i visited 'poison ivy' a few days later and came upon a brochure which made mention of wild boars in the area, i began to think that they were indeed wild boars that i had seen.
as if to confirm it, i saw two huge ones a few weeks later. it had rained earlier and my first sighting was two small ones which quickly disappeared into the undergrowth. i drove on, along the same track, and dimmed my lights because i did not want to scare them away; i wanted to be certain of what i would see. as i rounded a bend, i saw them. they made a quick exit into the bushes.
around the same place, i have also come across four jungle fowls but they do not look like the red ones i saw at sungei buloh. i saw two pairs of the jungle fowls at two different spots. they seemed to be taller than the red jungle fowls but without any tinge of red on their body. they all disappeared before i could whip out my digital camera.
i may also be wrong about the total disappearance of fireflies in singapore. there have been reports of encounter with fireflies, especially by soldiers, at army training areas in lim chu kang and pulau tekong.
this afternoon i was at the sungei buloh wetland reserve and from the main bridge i saw six otters - four adults and two cubs - playing and hunting for food near the mouth of the sungei buloh besar. this is not my first time seeing otters in the wild. i have come across otters twice, both times at the sand-spit near platform 1 of the wetland reserve.
