Weekend macro, Surrey

Visit Mark Fellowes Nature Photography

After Indonesia, back to more sedate natural history. The following images are from a few hours pottering in a local nature reserve (Fox Corner), some plantation forestry (Ash Ranges) and my back garden. Nothing spectacular, but always worth looking at...

Common red soldier beetle Rhagonycha fulva


Dark bush-cricket Pholidoptera griseoaptera male


Solitary bee Andrena sp.?


Female scorpionfly Panorpia sp.


Painted lady Vanessa cardui


Honeybee Apis mellifera on heather flowers.


Hoverfly Helophilus pendulus


Gatekeeper Pyronia tithonus


Spectacular (but unidentified) fly

Bogor Botanic Garden, Java

Visit Mark Fellowes Nature Photography

Our flight home was scheduled to leave just after midnight, leaving a full day to visit one last site. We headed off to Bogor Botanic Gardens, which is about 60km outside of Jakarta. The trip to Bogor provided insights into the socio-economic situation in Indonesia - city skyscrapers and slums jostling for space, and the smog of air pollution hanging over both.

The botanic garden is an oasis of calm amid the bustling town of Bogor. The gardens are almost 200 years old, and trees from all tropical regions have been planted. In total there are over 15,000 species represented. We spent the afternoon wandering through the parkland, and visiting the small (and dated) zoology museum - this helped place much of what we'd seen in the previous two weeks in context. Click any of the images for a larger version.









Bird-life was plentiful in the gardens...

Tree sparrows Passer montanus were common. They are an introduced species in Indonesia.


Black-crowned night heron Nycticorax nycticoraxadult and juvenile - large numbers were found on an island in the lily pond.




Sooty-headed bulbul Pycnonotus aurigaster. Common in Bogor.


Bar-winged prinia Prinia familiaris

Orangutans at Camp Leakey, Tanjung Puting

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The only reason Tanjung Puting survives is the presence of large numbers of wild orangutans, and the efforts of the Orangutan Foundation to protect what remains of this critically important remnant of southern Bornean peat-swamp tropical rain forest. While with some luck, wild orangutans may be seen along the Sekonyer and Sekonyer Kanan, views are likely to be distant or fleeting. If you want (almost!) guaranteed views, then Camp Leakey must be visited.

Camp Leakey, set up by Birute Galdikas in the early 1970s, is home to a number of rehabilitated and bi-cultural (offspring of wild and rehabilitated individuals) orangutans. Orangutans have not been released in Tanjung Puting for over 15 years, but the efforts to support them continues, with daily provisioning of milk and bananas at a small feeding station. When times are good, few orangutans visit - foraging instead in the forest. This is where all tourists end up - not that there are many. This year was the busiest I have seen it, and yet we are still only talking about a couple of dozen people. It is not unusual to have the feeding station almost to yourself - a real contrast to the zoo-like atmosphere in some other reserves.

We also came across Pedro at Camp Leakey. Pedro was our companion at Pondok Ambung last year, watching us at mealtimes, hoping for hand-outs. Following a fight with a wild orangutan Pedro had lost use of an eye and had gained a large rip in his upper lip, meaning that his days of fighting for territory are over. He has gained weight over the last year, and looks much healthier, and this image shows how close you can get on occasion to orangutans at Camp Leakey.



In terms of photography I have collected a large number of orangutan images over the years, and now try to get something a little different. Princess's baby Paul provided the cute-factor, before I tried a few slow-shutter speed shots to try to capture the impression of play, and the focused in on the detail of a baby orangutan keeping a firm hold of his mother. Finally in the series, there's the kind of image I really like. Here, I used an ultra wide-angle lens with a focused burst of fill-flash to highlight the orangutans. I like the unusual perspective it provides, but realise that it's not to everyone's taste.

These are the last images from Borneo. Next - a few images from Bogor botanic garden, western Java.

Monkeys and birds along the Sekonyer and Sekonyer Kanan

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The rivers
The Sekonyer River forms the western border of Tanjung Puting, and the Sekonyer Kanan (kanan just means 'right') is a tributary which runs through the Park. These are black water rivers - acid and tea coloured from running through peat swamp.

The rivers are the transport arteries of Tanjung Puting - it is the easiest way to travel around the park. In the evening macaques and proboscis monkeys bed down in tall river-side trees, and this is the best place to see them, but makes photography difficult, with low light and deep shadows.

Other primates, such as wild orangutans (seven seen this year) and silvery langurs (found in the nypa palms down-river) are also occasionally seen.

The waters of the Sekonyer are no longer black - the impact of sediment released by mining (see the bottom of this page).



The Sekonyer Kanan is a smaller river, and remains a true black-water river.



Long-tailed macaque Macaca fasicularis

Long-tailed macaques are frequently seen, but this year we gained fewer good views than usual, in contrast with some fantastic views of proboscis monkeys. Here, a juvenile is grooming an adult female.


Proboscis monkey Nasalis larvatus
Proboscis monkeys are endemic to Borneo, and they are often seen along the river, especially in the evening. Proboscis monkeys are folivores.








Birds

The rivers provide one of the best places to see birds, with kingfishers and swiftlets often seen.

Brahminy kite Haliastur indus


Lesser adjutant stork Leptoptilos javanicus, now an uncommon species.


Long-tailed parakeet Psittacula longicauda


Hornbills, such as this black hornbill Anthracoceros malayanus, pied hornbill and the spectacular rhinoceros hornbill are regularly seen.


Aspai mine
Aspai mine is up-river from the junction of the Sekonyer and Sekonyer Kanan. Miners strip the surface vegetation and sift the alluvial sand for gold and zircon. This year the workers have exhausted Aspai, and they have moved down-stream, starting to clear vegetation, as shown by the final image.





Tanjung Puting faces many threats - from oil palm plantations, from logging, from farming and from mining. In the next post I will show why the park continues to survive...

Pondok Ambung - Part 3: Invertebrates

Visit Mark Fellowes Nature Photography

While the vertebrates gain the most attention, the greatest biodiversity is seen with invertebrates, and some of these species are truly spectacular! These are the current images I've processed, and will add a few more over the next couple of days, but these images do reflect the impressive fauna of Pondok Ambung.

Butterflies and moths - Lepidoptera
This is a female Atlas moth Attacus atlas (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae; modelled by Rosie, who found it!), and had a wingspan of 20cm. Atlas moths (click any for larger) are among the largest lepidopterans, and in terms of wing area are the largest of any insect. Adult atlas moths don't feed, and this one only survived another 12 hours after it was first found.



A few caterpillars were found, ranging from this striking individual, to the incredibly well camouflaged species below. The latter looked just like a twig, and if it hadn't been in the open it would have been unnoticed. Other impressive adult lepidopterans are seen, but most butterflies are difficult to photograph, as they are particularly mobile - this unidentified individual was an exception (below; click for larger).







Beetles - Coleoptera

The battle for most impressive insect of Pondok Ambung must be between the atlas moth and this enormous atlas beetle Chalcosoma atlas (Coleoptera: Scarabaediae; click for larger) at about 12cm long, excluding legs. Diet affects horn length in this species, and they can be much longer.

This rhinoceros beetle (Megasoma sp.? Coleoptera: Scarabaediae; click for larger) was also very impressive.



Dragonflies and damselflies - Odonata
Of all of the insects (in spite of how spectacular many are) at Pondok Ambung, it is the odonates that I particularly like - in part because they are identifiable. So many of the insects we see in Borneo are in groups without useful field guides, or where keys require access to dissection microscopes.

The first three images (click any for larger) are of Brachygonia oculata, which prefers more shaded forest edges. This is in contrast to the following species, Neurothemis fluctuans, which is more common in sunny patches. The final dragonfly is Orthetrum chrysis, another member of the Libellulidae.






Damselflies are more common in the forest, rather than in the more open areas preferred by dragonflies. The first image is of Amphicnemis wallacii (Coenagrionidae), a distinctive species, looking like a small fluorescent fishing float in flight. The second image is of another coenagrionid, yet to be identified.




Stick insects - Phasmidae
Frequently seen, rarely identified to species!



Crickets and grasshoppers - Orthoptera

Very common, and again impossible to identify beyond family. Tettigonids (bush crickets) are common, and it was interesting to see one female ovipositing into the trunk of a tree.




True bugs - Hemiptera
Both phytophagous and predatory hemipterans are common, and many are strikingly coloured. This individual was several cms long.



Huntsman spider - Sparassidae
The image to the left is a close-up of a female huntsman spider, carrying her characteristic disk-shaped egg sac. Spiders are large, common and diverse at Pondok Ambung.

Next - birds and monkeys on the Sekonyer and Sekonyer Kanan...