Here are some updates of the new upgrade of Sepilok Laut Reception Centre (SLRC) in Feb 2012. If you plan your trip to Sepilok Laut based on my earlier blog about SLRC, you may need to read the following changes.
Pic: Sepilok Laut Reception Centre (SLRC)
1. New Boardwalk of SLRC
Sabah Forestry Department has constructed a 700-Meter Belian (Ironwood) boardwalk to connect existing SLRC to camping ground in Kabili-Sepilok Forest Reserve in early 2012.
The new boardwalk will allow you to explore the pristine mangrove forest of Sepilok Laut, without walking in this muddy swamp.
Pic: Mangrove Discovery Centre and the new boardwalk
Pic: This 700-Meter boardwalk is built 2 Meters above the ground.
I visited the new boardwalk a month ago and found that this new boardwalk is great for bird-watching, as you can enter deep into the mangrove forest to look for mangrove bird species.
During my 1-day birding tour there, I spotted the following birds along the boardwalk.
The boardwalk is also a nice way to see mangrove ecology and wildlife upclose. You would see proboscis monkey, macaques, monitor lizard, crocodile and mangrove viper here, depends on your luck.
Pic: Mangrove Reception next to SLRC boardwalk.
The main mangrove species in Sepilok Laut are bangkita (Rhizophora apiculata), tengar (Ceriops tagal), nyireh (Xylocarpus granatum) and geriting (Lumnitzera littorea).
Mosquitoes are active here during dawn and dusk. Do bring insect repellent. You will be deep in the forest, so there is no shop around to sell you this.
In the past, for tourists who wanted to do a jungle trekking from Sepilok to SLRC, the trail started at Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. This trail is poorly-maintained and turns muddy after rain.
Now the new 7-KM trail starts at Rainforest Discovery Centre (RDC) and passes by two waterfalls. I haven’t tried it but I assume it is better. You may click the trail map above for more details.
Other than what I mentioned above, nothing much is changed in Sepilok Laut Mangrove Discovery Centre. The naughty long-tailed macaques are still around. I miss them so much. But I didn’t see Paul, the alpha male this time.
3. Night Walk at SLRC
Again, I did a night walk at SLRC. I started my walk on a rainforest trail from SLRC to Camping Ground, then return to SLRC via the boardwalk. By doing so, I could see nocturnal animals of rainforest and mangrove forest. Cool huh? Unfortunately, it rained that night so I had to rush back. Anyway, I still photographed some interesting flora.
The new facilities of SLRC definitely made my experience there more enjoyable.
After enjoying the view of misty mangrove forest in the morning, I headed back to Sandakan city by speed boat.
If you love being in touch with forest, Sepilok Laut Reception Centre (SLRC) is really worth a visit, as it allows you to see two ecosystems, i.e., rainforest and mangrove, in one place. Have you been there? Please share your experience with me.
It was an exciting night in Poring rainforest. I finally found the insect that I had been looking for years. Many friends are also very impressed with this insect. Please read on to see it.
I suppose Poring rainforest is an ideal site for night walk due to its rich flora and fauna. Surprisingly, no tourist asks for a night safari in Poring, so I had to hire a nature guide to start one at 7pm. The fee is about RM70-100 (?USD20-30) per hour. We have a happy start when we spot a white wolf spider with red mouth.
Above: A litter frog that has big head, cute..
Then we saw a giant river toad, which is endemic to Borneo and famous for its foul smell. I didn’t smell anything though. There is a myth that this toad will laugh if you tickle its belly.
We rub its belly gently with a twig. You may watch the 1-min video below to see if it laughs:
There are quite a number of big spider around, like the leopard spider above. It is easy to spot them coz their eyes reflect our torchlight.
Small spider waits for prey in fungus cup.
A very long stick insect. The guide says the village kids are used to eat the eggs of stick insect because its eggs are big and look like chocolate.
Fat stick insect on tapioca leaf. Seem like stick insect loves tapioca leaf coz I found a few more.
Here comes the highlight of my night walk. Can you spot anything in the photo above?
Can’t see it? Below is the answer. It’s a Leaf mimicking Grasshopper (Chorotypus gallinaceus) that perfectly camouflaged as a dead leaf.
I had heard about this insect. I’m so glad to see one. When I was busy taking its photo, suddenly it just played dead and dropped itself to the ground. The guide and me shouted, “Oh sh*t!” because it would be very hard to spot it among the foliage. Luckily we located it again.
We also saw a big snail near Kipungit Waterfall. So far it’s the largest forest snail that I’ve ever seen.
Above: Giant bent-toed gecko on tree trunk.
There are some tiger leeches lurking in the bush. They were so excited when they sensed our heat.
Another highlight is the mating of two tiger leeches. It lasts for quite a long time and both leeches caress each other like crazy. You may see their action in the 1-min video below: Click Here for bigger video
Our night walk ended at 11pm, just before the heavy rain came. I can’t wait to go back there again one day. If you love such activity, Poring is highly recommended for night safari.
In a night walk inside Sabah highland forest, Jimmy shouted, “Hey! There is a horned frog here!” “Where?” I asked. I only saw him pointing his torchlight to a leaf. He picked up the “leaf” and showed me a Bornean Horned Frog (Megophrys nasuta) that I had been dreaming of photographing.
Suddenly, this Bornean Horned Frog became a superstar and everyone was busy photographing it. With “horns” on its head, this horned frog looks grumpy and so evil that if a princess kisses it, I believe it would turn into a demon, the prince of darkness, instead of a handsome prince riding on white horse. Just kidding, it’s a very gentle frog.
However, many told me that this one looks special as its throat is bright-orange in color.
Its “horn” is a pointy and triangular projection from the edge of the eyelid. In fact, this structure makes horned frog looks like foliage on forest floor. It remains stealth and still, waits and snaps the unsuspecting preys that passing by.
Don’t you think that it’s cute? I love horned frog.
Besides horned frog, there were many other frogs after the rain, when the snakes are less active. I took a lot of photos of frogs and other small creatures, and share them in this album. Thank you Mr. Kelvin Kueh (Anurans researcher from Universiti Malaysia Sabah) for the identification of the frog species.
We also saw a very tiny frog but don’t know what species it is. Anyone can tell if it is the smallest frog in the world?
Minitinduk Gorge is the ancient gateway to Mt. Kinabalu, as it is on “The Hugh Low Trail”, an original summit trail used by documented first male climbers, Sir Hugh Low (1851) and Sir John Whitehead (1888), and female climber, Lillian Gibbs (1910), of Mt. Kinabalu, the highest peak of Malaysia. After another “tourist” trail opens in 1924 (by R.F. Evan and Sarel), climbers / tourists are no longer using this trail located in Kampung Kiau (Kiau Village) of Kota Belud district.
Last month I joined a 2-day-1-night camping trip organized by The Sabah Society to explore the gorge. The weather was good for the past few days until we departed in the afternoon, but the heavy downpour didn’t hold us back. By 2:30pm, we reached the junction to Kampung Kiau (Kiau Village), which is a few Kilometers (KM) after Nabalu and 29 KM before Ranau, and where we met up with Mr. Martin Moguring, our guide from Kinabalu Park. Dr. Ravi, the co-writer of the book “The Hugh Low Trail”, is the organizer of this trip.
Then we drove to the school in Kiau Village, which takes another 30 minutes. We parked our cars in the village and walked to the starting point, just a stone throw away from the village. We were told in advance that we will cross multiple small rivers, so most of us were wearing short. Our group also hired 3 porters (Rony, Abinus and Bengent) to carry some of our bags and supplies.
Jungle Trekking & River Crossing
The distance from Kiau Village to Minitinduk Gorge is only 3.5 KM and take about 2 hours of trekking. For the first day, we walk 3 KM to Sambatang Cave and camp there. The second day we walk from the cave to the Gorge, which is only 500 Meters away. FYI, the gorge is in a private land outside of the Kinabalu Park boundary.
In the beginning, we passed through the farmland, mainly consists of paddy, maize, ginger and other food crops.
Pretty soon we entered the secondary forest, characterized by dense undergrowth. It is still raining so it’s very humid in the forest and this “activates” the little brown forest leeches that live in deeper jungle and love wet environment (and our blood!). There are not many of them and most are only 1cm in length. I had seen forest leeches 5 times bigger in primary rainforest, so these tiny-sized blood suckers didn’t bother me. I didn’t even feel that I got one leech bite until I saw my leg bleeds.
Though it’s a newly generated forest, there are still potential dangers around. Like the harmless looking plant in photo above, its leaves are poisonous and able to make your skin really painful and itchy when touched. But there are many “good” plant too, Martin shows us some plant that can be used as food, preservatives or herbal medicines by local people.
As I’m an experienced hiker, the trail is not rugged and I consider it as an easy walk, not strenuous and challenging at all. Most of the time, we moved on the nature trail adjacent to the Kadamaian River and its tributaries such as Kolapis, and there are about 10 river crossing. But I’m not so used to river crossing. After heavy rain, the rivers rose, turning swift and deep.
Though the depth of river only reaches our knee level, the current is strong enough to push you down if you don’t stand firm. The worst thing is the murky water caused by heavy rain, we can’t see the irregular bottom. We had to cross slowly, probing the depth in front with one foot to avoid stepping into deeper water. I almost fell into the icy-cold water with my camera once.
My best advise is – Trust NO rock and boulder near the river. They all look deceptively safe to step on, but they offer zero friction, after being “waxed” by the river for a long time!
Our socks are soaking wet. Only Dr. Ravi walks with happy dry feet. He also shows us his simple solution – just drill a hole on the shoe for draining of water, lol.
As we were moving further up the river, the boulders get bigger and bigger and see more and more cascading streams, the characteristics of river upstream. The water is so clean, unlike other milk-tea color rivers caused by excessive logging in upstream area (e.g. Padas) of Sabah.
Sambatang Cave
Finally we reach Sambatang Cave at 5:30pm!
Actually Sambatang Cave is a cavernous space under an overhanging huge boulder. It can accommodate 3 to 4 people.
Since the daylight is vanishing, we quickly setup 3 camping tents on the flat area near the cave.
According to the porters, Sambatang Cave is an ideal natural shelter, even the heaviest rain can’t flood the cave.
The porters collected some wood and started a camp fire to “smoke” the cave, as the smell can keep creepy animals such as snake and centipede away from the cave. I’m so happy to keep my feet dry and warm.
Light not only attract insect, it also draws human. After having instant noodle as dinner and a few rounds of hot coffee, everyone squeezes into this small cave to warm themselves up with camp fire.
Night Walk
When I started to see bugs crawling around the cave, I decided to take a night walk to check out the bug party in forest.
Above: a stick insect pretends or thinks that it’s a stick.
You can hear a lot of frog calls near the river.
Same as frog, toad is everywhere too.
Above: This little green frog is almost invisible on the green fern.
When the night is late, I go to bed in Sambatang Cave, which is also the place the early explorers like Sir John Whitehead and Lilian Gibbs spent their night before heading to the summit, as described in their chronicles more than a hundred years ago. Do remember to bring floor mat and sleeping bag if you plan to sleep inside the cave. Torchlight / LED headlamp is needed if you want to do your business in dark night. The night was so cold that I can feel the chill in my 7°C-grade sleeping bag.
What’s for Breakfast?
My biological clock waked me up at 6am next morning. I saw the porters busy preparing breakfast. From their happy smiles, they must be waiting for something really tasty.
Out of curiosity, I take a look what is inside the pot. Oh dear, those are the frogs they catch. No wonder I saw them searching for something along the river last night. Well, I was there hunting for frog photos but they hunt for the frog meat.
Then they grill the frog over the fire. Please note that only certain frog species are edible as some are poisonous. You can find the edible frogs for sales in local native market called “Tamu”. Species such as Limnonectes ingeri (greater swamp frog), Limnonectes kuhlii (Large-headed Frog) and Limnonectes leporinus (Giant River Frog) yield high demand as food by local people.
Above: almost done…
They gave a frog leg for me to try. Being open-minded and “adventurous”, I eat it. To my surprise, the frog meat is so sweet and tender. It is slightly chewy but taste a lot better than chicken, trust me.
Minitinduk Gorge
After breakfast, we leave our bags in cave and head to Minitinduk Gorge, which is only 500 Meters away. 15 minutes later, we exit the dense canopy and see Minitinduk Gorge is right in front of us! Minitinduk means “the meeting of two beaks” in Dusun language. The gorge looks like a twin towers less than 50 feet from each other, with Kadamaian River flows between them. Someone believe the gap is even narrower and both sides almost touching each other in the past, as a legend says a Kiau couple can jump over to the other side, when they try to escape from a group of headhunters from Bundu Tuhan.
We take a group photo with banner. We look so small in the photo. The gorge is about 150 feet in height. There is a theory saying that the gorge was once a waterfall with a lake at the bottom. One day the waterfall collapsed and creates the gap that bisected the hill, based on a historical record that there should be a lake under Mt. Kinabalu but is never found.
Inside the gorge is an opening with Kadamaian River flows between the vertical rocky cliffs. Even though tourists nowadays don’t use this trail, the Kadazandusun people believe this is still the holy trail for the spirits of the dead to go to their final resting place, the Mount Kinabalu, and this gorge is the gate. It sounds scary when our day of visit coincides with the Chinese ghost festival day.
The water of Kadamaian River is from Mt. Kinabalu. It looks cleaner than our tap water and nice for a dip. Too bad I didn’t bring my swim trunk.
If you follow the ancient trail further upstream, you can reach the summit trail of tourists at Lowii or Paka Shelter of Mt. Kinabalu. On the way, you will see super-huge Kadamaian Waterfall. Someone estimate the height of Kadamaian Waterfall is about 250 to 350 Meters and could be the tallest waterfall of Malaysia.
Enough with photo-taking, we left Minitinduk Gorge. It is really a nice trip over the weekend.
We packed our backpack and go back to Kota Kinabalu city at 11am. Personally I would like to thank The Sabah Society members who spent months of research to retrace this historical trail. You may watch the 6-minute video on our trip to Minitinduk Gorge.
Reference “The Hugh Low Trail: The Quest for the Historical Trail to the Summit of Kinabalu” by Dr. Ravi Mandalam, Dr. Chin Shui Hiung and Christopher Chin, published by The Sabah Society, Jan 2004
Photos taken in Kota Belud, Sabah, Malaysia Borneo
Here comes the highlight of my trip in Crocker Range Park, the night walk! I did two night walks, 1st night in Insectarium, and 2nd night in 2.036KM Crocker trail. You see nothing much in both places during daytime, but they turn into a busy world when night falls. If you are interested in night walk, you can arrange in advance with the Park at Administration Office or Crocker Nature Center during office hours. They will send a ranger to guide you. Usually the walk starts at 7:30pm.
Night Walk in Insectarium
For my 1st night walk in Insectarium, the Park sends two ladies to accompany me, wow. They asked, “would you mind if the guide is female?” I smiled and replied, “No… Of course not” (why should I, hehe..). Oh, by the way, the lady at the left is Tomomi Kan, a Japanese volunteer from JICA. At the right is Lucy Suin, a Sabah Parks staff.
No kidding… these girls have sharp eyes. They started to discover bugs the moment we stepped into Insectarium. Normally girls will scream when they see bugs. However, these girls are so happy to find creepy creatures in the dark, like enjoying a treasure hunt. With the aid of torchlight, we search every inch of Insectarium and left no leaf unturned.
One by one, the bugs reveal themselves under their torchlight. I wonder how they did it. Probably they are so used to insect collection. Crocker Range Park has over 400 species of insects, making the Park one of the best spots for collecting specimen.
Above: this might be a Malaysian Earth Tiger (Cyriopagopus thorelli) tarantula spider
Above: a cricket disguised as the tip of leaf!
There are more bugs discovered when we moved closer to the pond and stream areas. It was such a joyful experience!
Above: an agamid that can change color in minute
Above: a very long stick insect found by Lucy, the highlight of the 1st night walk.
It started to rain at 10pm, so we had to stop our night walk and said goodbye to each other. Anyway, I’m really happy to bag so many good shots.
Night Walk in Crocker Trail
Because of the exciting experience, I decided to arrange another night walk in Crocker Trail (2.036 KM) next day. This time the Park sends Mr. Rosandy Angkusup to guide me. I feel sorry to make them work until late night in fasting month (Puasa), so I tipped all the guides. Same as the lady guides, Rosandy has a trained eyes to beat the smart camouflage by bugs, especially stick insects.
Above: a moulting cicada. The moulting was so slow that we couldn’t wait until it finished.
Above: the cotton-like substance is a group of Wooly aphid insect, amazing…
We saw at least 3 fireflies in the jungle.
It is so impressive that crickets can look so different to one another.
Above: this alien-like cricket was shown in National Geographic channel before. The Crocker Trail is far more promising because the trail is inside the real forest.
Besides bugs, we also saw a Shama bird sleeping on tree, a mouse deer, heard the loud barking of a barking deer (probably smell our presence) and 2 civets at the edge of primary rainforest. We would get some if we carry hunting rifle, haha. Of course, poaching is prohibited in national park.
Above: giant river toad
Stick Insects
Rosandy is so professional in spotting stick insects (I always miss it!). I never saw so many stick insects in one night, nor do I know stick insects have so many species and variety. Some can play dead and some can release foul smell as a defense. Some can fly while some can’t. But all of them have one thing in common – they look like stick.
Above: very long stick insect
We moved so slowly that the night walk ended at 12:30am and our torchlight was almost out of battery. This is the best night walk I’ve had. I’ll be back one day.
WARNING: I know this blog would attract insect collectors. Please be informed that collection of any flora & fauna in national park without a permit, whether the subject is dead or alive, is a serious offense. You will be fined heavily or even jailed for illegal collection. Crocker Range National Park is NOT a place for you to look for toy pet!!!
Miki Survival Camp is a tourism project initiated by the community of Kiau. After they ran the project, villagers started to realize the benefits of the conservation. Instead of clearing the forest for farming, they keep the jungles, especially those near to Miki camp. Personally I like to visit those pristine places other than those attractions developed by blood-sucking and money-minded tour operators, who only want to build luxury chalets and charge tourists by thousand$$$.
After having warm porridge as lunch, our guide, Jimmy, led us for the afternoon education tour. He showed us some of the common traps used by the locals to catch wild animals. All traps are cleverly designed, with ropes, wood, strings, gravity and spring force as mechanism, no battery required. They either setup the trap in the animal path or put bait inside the trap. Jimmy also blew a folded ginger leaf, making sound to lure kijang (a lamb like small deer).
Few traps can be quite nasty, like the Vunsoi trap, if the wild boar or deer trips on a string, it will release a wooden bow spring that swing a spear. They even have smaller traps for snake, squirrel, mouse and jungle fowl. To avoid being wordy, I put more photos in album with captions, for your further reading. Tourists who join Miki Camp will get a small book, with info on trap setting. Besides the traps, Jimmy also told us the edible stuffs such as wild ginger fruit (tampo) and fern (pakis), herbal plant such as wadan vine, poisonous plant such as tohipoi, wild plum and bekago. It is interesting and useful to know all these.
Because of the wet forest floor, as we moved deeper inside the jungle, we were attacked by legion of tiger leeches. The leeches were hiding in the vegetation next to the trail, as we walked by, our raincoats were also sweeping the plant, harvesting leeches like vacuum. Haha… this is also part of the experience. We checked on each other regularly, remove leeches on our raincoat, so nobody got bitten (miracle!). Jimmy collected over 10 leeches and rub them in his palm, the heat killed all the leeches, and he showed me the “leech ball”, iyaak!
Later we were back to the campsite and Jimmy demo some craft works and skills, like making bamboo mat and roof, splitting firewood (in fastest and effortless way), creating bamboo fish trap (berusat), using blowpipe, etc. While we were happily sharing our excitement of the day, Rayner had started cooking our dinner, probably lizard soup and worm noodles, just kidding..
Early dinner in jungle is advisable. If you eat at night with light on, it will attract all sorts of flying bugs from the forest. We had fried rice, mixed vegetables, ketchup chicken and crab soup as our dinner. Rayner is such a good cook, or we were too hungry. It was also nice to have a cup of coffee or tea in the cold.
Jungle seemed to get dark sooner. The cold night kicked in, after a heavy meal, everyone already felt sleepy next to the fire place.
NIGHT WALK
The next programme was the one I anticipated the most, the night walk. In daytime, we didn’t see a lot of wild things, I only saw a huge stink bug and a Daddy Long Legs (Harvestmen Spider). However, the jungle is a extremely busy world at night. We started the night walk at 7:00pm and the noisy surrounding sounded very promising. In search of rare and weird bug, some foreigner photographers had visited this site much more earlier than me. In fact, this area is the buffer zone between Kiau Village and Kinabalu Park that is rich in biodiversity. With the aid of torchlight, we slowly walked across the jungle and scanned the plant and trees like treasure hunt.
After a short walk, the guide said, “turn off your light.” “Huh? what?” I replied but did so anyway. Then we saw patches of glowing green in total darkness (see photo above). “That’s a glowing fungus,” Jimmy said. When we turned on the light again, we only saw very ordinary green fungus on a rotten tree log. I was really thrilled and setup my tripod, attempting to capture the glow. I only took one shot coz I didn’t want everyone waited for me. Later we also spotted glowing mushroom.
Then the next interesting creature we saw was a very tiny frog (see photo above). It is so small that any normal frog can swallow it in one snap. It was sitting on a ordinary-size leaf. We carried on and saw more bugs, most were creepy types that could make girls screamed. I didn’t stop clicking my camera, every few steps there would be new things, like firefly, frogs (some are poisonous), stick insect, cricket, grasshopper, forest cockroaches, gecko, cave centipede, big snail, etc.
Guess what was the biggest bug we saw that night? It was not frog and lizard. The jackpot of this night walk was a giant caterpillar (see photo below)! This caterpillar is longer than my palm, probably about 7 inches long. Jimmy said, “I also never see anything like this before. You are so lucky.” Anyone can tell me what it is? We tried to look for the horned frog but didn’t find any. I was so happy already anyway. The cold weather drained the power of my camera battery very fast. My last battery only had two bars of power left. I needed to save it for next day. Damn… otherwise I would have spent more time and shot more…
About an hour later, we returned to our camp. There was no electricity and TV, so we went to bed, without taking a bath, lol… Though our camps were not too far apart, it was totally dark and I felt that my camp was alone. It was so noisy at night, with sounds from frogs, bugs and birds. Some lame writers like to describe this as the “orchestra” of jungle sounds. To me, it is just plain noisy. Since I was so tired, that didn’t really bother me. In midnight, I was waked up by a loud bang. Next day the guide told me it was bamboo “exploding”, it is common and can be as loud as gun shot.
Temperature still dropped in late night. So cold that everyone of us waked up and put on more clothing. Very soon I wanted to pee. I grabbed my torchlight and walked to the toilet. On the way back, I saw something moving slowly on a log. It was a very beautiful snake, with gold color and tiger-like stripes on its body, and got red eyes! It saw me and stayed motionless. Quickly I ran to my camp, took my camera and shot some photos. I was so glad I didn’t step on this snake by accident. When I was back to town, a snake expert told me that it’s a Bornean Dark-necked Slug Snake (Asthenodipsas borneensis) which feeds on snails and slugs. It’s endemic to Borneo and I’m very lucky to see one.
This frog has been enjoying free buffet there for 3 days. Every evening, he always comes to the same spot on time, eating all the ants passing in front of him. The ants only discovered their friends disappeared next to them, one by one in split second. When they looked around for the enemy, they only saw something liked a pile of lifeless brown shit.
Their sixth-sense told them that there was something seriously wrong, but they could not figure out why. So more and more ants gathering and wandering nearby the suspicious spot. This only made the frog even happier. Isn’t it a thrill to do bad thing without being detected? Haha… evil me..
Happily, the frog eats more and more…
More and more…
And more and more… until it is nearly exploded.
Without doubt, tomorrow he will come back again for more. lol…
This is quite a common frog in Sabah I don’t know its name). After heavy rain at night, you can hear them crying loud “Hong… Hong…” in the drain. They are very easy to catch by hand coz they are fat and slow. I would say their jumping skill is the worst among all the frog species. To survive, they have two “techniques”. First, stay motionless so the predators can’t “see” it. There are many animals are as stupid as ants. That’s why this frog won’t extinct. If this method fails, it will inflate its body to make itself looks really big, to scare the enemy away. So cute…
Photos taken in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia Borneo
I was in Kundasang last week. Kundasang is so near to Kinabalu Park, so I was walking around at night to see if I could find any interesting animal. Probably it was windy, coz I didn’t find any bug around. But I found a lot of frogs in the pond.
Quite disappointed, there were dozens of frogs but all of them belong to one species, which is commonly found in Sabah. If I am not mistaken, Sabah Chinese calls them “Money Frog”. I am not talking about the Money Toad, which holds a coin in its mouth, like the one you find in the shop entance. In the dark, the frogs are less sensitive to my move, so I can come very close to them for a photo session.
The 58mm close-up len for my old Sony Cybershot DSC-H1 can fit nicely to my Canon EOS 400D. This allows me to magnify the subject by 50% more. However, without a “live view” (most SLRs do not have a LCD preview screen like all compact camera does) I found it extremely troublesome to take the photo with view finder. I have to tried 4 or more times to get the picture composition right.
Later I saw a toad on the mud trail. It was just laying there motionless, thinking that nobody and prey could see it. If there are frogs, there should be snake around (predator of frogs). After nearly 3 hours of waiting and searching, still no luck… Under dim light, I discovered something like a big worm crawling on the water weed. It was a “baby” of the dragonfly. With 3-inch of length, I think it can take down a small frog.
In the next morning, a friend showed me a small snake in a garden. It is only as small as a chopstick, but with bright color on its head and tail, seem like a sign of poisonous snake.
You can click the photo above to get a close-up look. I used a stick to move it to the grass, for a more “nature-like” photo. It escaped quite quickly so I only got one shot. If I was not in a rush, I would have spent a few hours playing with it.
