9/10 - East Woods (10 Apr 10)

East Woods is another interesting site found on mainland Singapore! Over the years, besides visiting the popular and regular locations, IMOG continues the effort to explore all the potential Macro sites in this little island country. Now, the exploration finally has been given a name as . . . "Project Macrolumbus". Inspired by the passion and courage of the famous Christopher Columbus to explore the world, IMOG has set its sail to uncover the many more wonderful hidden new sites for Nature Macrophotography.

This new site is located at portion of Upper East Coast Road near/reaching Bedok Road. We set up and started at about 8.15 am. Then, most of us concentrated at the first quarter of the woods. Some subjects observed were : some wild flowers (mimosa, vernonia, railway creepers, asystasia, 2 passion flower species), 3 species of little moth (size of a 10 cents coin but hiding in low grasses, plenty of tiger moth), 1 weevil, weaver ants building nest, at least 3 dragonfly species, 1 caterpilar, 1 small red beetle, 2 butterflies, some grass hoppers, some spiders, crickets, and the star of the day was a juvenile red praying mantis (1^st sighting).

At about 10.45 am the rain started falling and we took shelter under the bus stop nearby. We had some chit chat then some of us headed to the Bedok Food Centre using bus (1 stop only) for lunch together, when rain turned drizzle.

It was only a 2.5 hours outing but we all had a great time. 25% of the entire woods was explored and we hope to explore the rest of it in near future.

(Juvenile Praying Mantis By Lee Yan Leong)

Participants (16) - Endy Tan (Team Leader), Ong Wee Shien, CP Chan, Lee Yan Leong, Yeo Tang Lin, Ong Lim Sim, Sharon S Lim, Hazel Han, Catherine Wong, Vivien Wee, Vincent See, Kelvin Loke, Tan Peck Kheng, Joe Bee Tong, Kyaw Htay & Agnes Goh