Friday, December 28, 2007
o.O
3 posts in 2 days???
i am going crazy....
anyway....today was the best day of my holidays
but not in a good way
today i went to nik's place to "study"
thats what he told me the day before
in the end...go there play Wii and DS
haha....so much for studying
took me an hour to get there and an hour to get back
taking 93 from this house and transfering to 163 home
the moment i got home and set up my laptop....
suddenly not feeling well....go and rest....
work up at 1830 to have dinner beofre sleeping again
wa.... play and fall sick on the same day....pro or not
anyway, here is my day 2 reflections for the EAGLES camp i been to earlier in the month
enjoy.......
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Day 2
The day started with a slowly as everyone awoke from their tents half asleep. I went to the hall to check on the insects we caught the night before. To my surprise, a new container was added on the table containing a huge rhino beetle. It was the biggest insect I have seen in my life and I could not contain my excitement and took it out of the container and onto my hand. But once there, it hooked onto my skin and I could not get it off without getting some of my skin off with it. An instructor, who happen to be with me, and I had to use a piece of paper for it to hook onto before my hand was free for the big beetle. As it was hanging onto my hand, it struck me how well equipped it was to hold onto and climb branches. Its front two legs were held out to stretch forward while the back two pairs of legs held tightly to the branch, or in this case my hand, to ensure it does not fall off.
To wake everyone up, a little warm up followed by a morning run woke everyone up as we ran to the duck rearing area which was a 5 min walk away from the hall. After we reached the duck area, we turned back to return to the hall for our breakfast. As the leading few people reached the hall, behind us was a big gap which was caused by people staying at the duck area watching the ducks swim about. It was not my first time I have laid my eyes on a duck, but for some people it was the first time they have seen a duck with their own eyes. To them, they ducks were cute and this caused them to watch the ducks for a long time. This again tells me that they have lived such a city life that they have never seen a duck other than on the dinner table.
Breakfast was Nasi Lemak, which was made of brown rice with small fish cucumbers and peanuts with a health serving of samba chill and hot milo. The hot milo made the breakfast the best meal we had so far into the camp.
After breakfast was the start of my group’s active catching of insects in the padi fields. We put on our life jackets and walked out onto the paddy fields to start our great hunt. I see no need to put on life jackets on this trip as we are not even going into the water and even if we do, the water is only half way up the knee. But as it better to be safe than sorry, these safely measures have to be taken to ensure that we arrive back in Singapore safely. What was struck us on the spot when we headed into the fields was the complete lack of insects other than dragonflies and pond-sackers. We went about trying to catch one of each only to find ourselves nothing to catch after that. It was a sight for sore eyes for us when we spotted a yellow butterfly flying near us. We quickly get our nets ready to catch the flying insect to add to our collection. With a little teamwork, we managed to trap the butterfly in between two nets and quickly transfer it into the plastic vials we brought. At closer inspection, we found some water boatmen in the paddy fields swimming in the water. Sadly, they were too small for our nets and could swim right through the holes on the nets.
What this lack of insect species tells me that there is a lack of diversity of food sources to support a large number of insect species. As the only source of food to start a food chain there was the rice plants, there can only be a few kind insects feeding on the rice. This in turn leads to fewer types of insects feeding on those rice eaters. This has limited the number of different insect species we can find in the area but has given us great insight into the how the environment affected the diversity of the insect of the area.
We visited a small building to ask for help from the farmers in our search for insects. We came across a couple of farmers killing fishes that will most likely be on our dinner tables that night or at a market place the following morning. To see life fishes which are still flapping their tails and gasping for air getting their fins chopped off and having a knife stabbed up their necks with blood flowing out was not a sight for those with weak stomach.
With our lack of results in mind, we went to check with the boss of the rice fields to ask for his views on the type of insects that can be found in and around the rice fields. It came to light that the insects that we were looking for, other than dragonflies and pond-sackers, were found deep in the fields and not on the outer edges where we were searching. We were told that if we wanted more insects we could check out the vegetable plantations and dragon-fruit plantations. It seems that the workers have been catching much different type of insects in that area and are glad to help out in our hunt for insects. With that in mind, we made plans to go visit the vegetable plantations in the afternoon.
As we returned from the fields, we meet up with our sister group who were also catching insects. But for them, they were catching them in the forest as compared to the farm area. As we reflected on our pitiful catch of insects, we were amazed at the number of insects they caught. They have caught at least ten different species from the forest. Over lunch we talked about the area we have gone to and where we planned to go to increase our collection. There were plans of exchanging group members to let everyone have a feel of both areas of catchment. The afternoon’s activities was to set the traps we have prepared in our areas to trap any insects in that area. We had six pitfall traps ready, three for each group, to be placed in each area.
Lunch was followed by the afternoon activities, which was a trip to the vegetable plantations and dragon-fruit plantations. As some or the other insect group wanted to follow us to the vegetable plantation, my friend and I went to follow the other insect group into the forest to try our luck at catching insects there and also to aid in the setting up of the traps. I loaded the three glass jars into my bag and made our way into the forest. As we enter the forest, I was hoping that we could find some new insects to add to our growing collection and help us have a better understanding of the environment’s effect on the insects.
As we entered the forested area, what struck me was the noise of the forest created by the insects in the forest. We were a few minutes into the forested area when we spotted a small beetle on a tree just beside us. A net was placed over the beetle as soon as I found in and it was quickly transferred into a plastic vile. In the very next tree in front of us I spotted an earwig resting on the trunk of the tree. As we just placed the beetle in my bag, we took out another plastic vile to catch the earwig.
Traveling deeper into the forest with these two catches gives me hope of a better catch deeper in the forest. As we approach the site in which we will be setting up our first pitfall trap, we took the spades and glass jars out to start setting up the trap. While some people were digging the forest group to insert the glass jar, I was looking around the area trying to spot any interesting insects to add to our collection. The pitfall traps are jars with some uncooked rice and pineapples inside to attract insects to the trap and fall into the glass jars and be trapped. Looking around the area of the trap I found some pitcher plants near the river that was running through the forest. I can see that what we are doing with the pitfall trap is based off this plant that use sweet smelling sugar to attract insects into its mouth and the slippery walls cause to insect to fall in and be trapped.
The next pitfall trap will be placed deep in the forest off the trail that we have been using. We were warned of leeches crawling around in that area and this put most of the team off and refused to enter the area. I went in with another guy to set the trap under a fallen log. At the entrance of the route I spotted a leech on the floor and went on to get rid of it to save myself from having a bloodsucker hanging off my foot for the rest of the day. Digging in the forest soil was not an easy task as there were roots under the surface that will hinder us in the need to digger deeper to set our trap. In the end, we had to set it in a slanted manner due to the roots under the jar. We walked back to the path and carried on with the track into the forest. But, a group member spotted a leech climbing on my shoe and screamed out loud as we went ahead and remove the leech and kill it by burning it. It seemed that this leech was very tough and managed to survive being burned alive and was still moving after we burned it. We decided to end its life by crushing it on ground.
The next site we visited was a termite nests under a log. The insect we wanted from that nest was the queen termite to make our collection an even better one. As we turn over the log, all that we see are workers and soldiers crawling around. As the morning’s trip to the nest caught a soldier termite, we wanted to complete the set and catch a worker as well. After that was done, we unearthed the nest in our attempt to find the queen. All we managed to do was destroy the nest to find no queen.
Last stop was the site where we will be placing the third pitfall trap. It was placed along the track hoping to catch any insects that may walk by. After the trap was set, we made our way back to camp to review the insects we have caught so far.
Back at camp we compiled the total insects caught by both groups and started labeling the locations of where we caught each insect. We had to stop this when the other groups returned and started the evening activities. The insects, birds and survey group are to go for a nature walk to learn more about nature. We learned about the waterproof abilities of the lotus leaves that allow water to slide off the leaves whenever there is water on the leaves. This is due to the closely packed molecules on the leaf surface which does not allow water to pass through. We can copy this design and come up with materials that act in the same way to aid the world. We also learned of the strength of silk made by spiders and some insects. If we could make materials with the same strength as the silk we could have stronger cables to support our world with. The coconut tree was also something we gained insights about. The tree of a hundred uses really does have many uses for each of its parts. A termite nest found in a dead tree gave us insight how smart some insects are to have different compartments in their nests for different reasons. Like a room for the queen termite as well as a room to rear the young.
Soon it was time to head back to camp and have dinner and prepared the light traps for use at night. The light traps use light to attract insects to it and trap the insects in water or in a net of sorts. After the light trap is ready, I went out with a girl from the other group and our teacher in charge for the biology groups as well as the temperature group out into the farm to place the trap and follow the temperature group in collecting their thermometers. As the few of us walk out into the night to set and collect, I was amused by how the boys from the temperature group screamed like little girls when a little insect jumped onto their hands. They were all of rather big builds but were scared of something that the girl following me was not. After we set up our traps and collected the thermometers, we headed back to camp to reflect on the day’s results.
The sky was clear and it was the perfect time to go star gazing. The sky was filled with stars and we started to find constellations and our own zodiac stars. Without and lights or buildings to block our view of the sky, we spotted many constellations that can never be seen in Singapore.
I learned from the night before how cold the nights can be and drew a sleeping bag to keep me warn during the nights. With the sleeping bag, I slept like a log throughout the night and was again awaken to the sounds of classic music from the alarm.
haha...another super long post
died at
20:28
