went with zhigang for a short excursion to some place with a few human souls but many long tailed macaques. thank God for the wonderful weather. looked as if it was going to rain but it didn't. the air temperature was comfortably cool.

below are some pictures of how the place looks like that i took with me and zhigang's phone camera, they are not very sharp but still not too bad.

that's my trekking buddy in the first pic. haha. the water pipe on the left side of the pic is huge and stretches for hundreds of metres. i remember the first time i went to the place, we walked on top of the pipe. it is about 2.5 metres above the ground i think.


the main theme of the day was searching for native species of freshwater fishes and semi-aquatic plants like cryptocoryne. and surprisingly we found a rich number of species yesterday. below are 2 pictures showing the typical habitat of our native freshwater fishes. the water has a brownish tint as a result of the tannins released from the senescencing leaves.

we got our feet and calves extremely muddy (see pic below). haha. so what do we do? we washed our feet using the water in the drain which comes from the pool of water in the second picture! the water is both clean and cooling.

this is another drain that we used to wash our muddy feet. haha.

we found this cute little frog (Microhyla butleri) on our way resting on the emergent leaf of a lily plant.

freshwater shrimps like the one found below are very common.

the picture below is a Rasbora einthovenii. this fish is pretty common in the streams we investigate.

The most numerous fish during our entire trip got to be the harlequin rasbora (Rasbora heteromorpha) (see picture directly below). the breeding season was probably quite recent ~ a few weeks ago, judging from the numerous juvenile fishes that were swarming the water body.

The picture below shows a juvenile freshwater pymgy halfbeak (Dermogenys pusillus). A long and slender predator that hunts for food near the water surface. It is a livebearer and the females give birth to live young like the guppy(Poecilia reticulata).

Below are two-spot rasbora (Rasbora elegans). Quite common fishes.

the picture below shows the forest betta (Betta pugnax), a relative of the famous siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens).

there! finally a post with some pictures! haha.