Today, the
Naked Hermit Crabs celebrate our 6th anniversary of doing free guided monthly tours at Chek Jawa!
And what better way to celebrate than with these wonderful visitors who joined us today.
Sophie is the star of our group and she helps take a photo of everyone before we begin.
She has a really cool polaroid camera!
Kok Sheng was accompanied by five of his students from Dunman High who are trying out being nature guides with the Naked Hermit Crabs. This is
the third year of Kok Sheng's EXCEL programme that hopes to expose students to real issues, and real efforts to address them by real people.
How nice, three generations of men, checking out the cool critters at the Chek Jawa boardwalk. We saw lots of crabs, mudskippers, spiders and other cool mangrove critters. Although there were also a lot of mosquitoes.
Here's Daniel explaining how the stilt roots help trees stay stable in the mud, explaining how it's rather wobbly to have to stand on one leg. Wow, a new and better story! I always learn so much from other guides!
Hurray! Pei Yan spots an eagle! She has really sharp eyes!
Catherine spots a Crimson sunbird and dad takes a shot as the rest of us don't have real cameras.
Pei Yan explains more about the nest boxes put up to encourage the hornbills to breed. An effort that has been very successful.
The wild boar piglets turned up when we arrived at House No. 1. They seemed to be attracted to some fallen fruits. As long as we don't alarm them, they seem quite comfortable among people.
Soon it was time to do some drawings to share what we have seen during our trip.
Everyone shares their favourite sightings of the day! What a great drawing of the forest and the wild boar!
Thank you for sharing these wonderful works of art.
Another young lady was too shy to take a photo with her lovely drawing. Which she wanted to take home to finish up. Thank you too, to all the mums, dads, kids who have come through all these years for our little walks!
There's always time for funny photos on a wall!
To celebrate our anniversary, Pei Yan gives out the Southern Shores guidesheet to those who came for our walk.
As we waited for the van, Sankar and Yin Xin shared more about how rubber is tapped from a rubber tree.
There was a run being held at Chek Jawa. We hadn't started our tour yet so couldn't see the exact route of the run, but the runners ran down towards the boardwalk, and we saw some running out from the other side of the boardwalk. One runner was blasting music and refused to turn it down. The organiser was informed and agreed to put a stop to it. Chek Jawa is a great place for families and others to enjoy and appreciate nature. It's hard to do this when there are people running through the narrow boardwalk, blasting music.
Pei Yan did more research and found out the route and the organiser of this run. She also asks some important questions about whether and how runs should be allowed at Chek Jawa and our other nature places. Read more on her blog post:
"Running allowed at Chek Jawa?".
During the walk, we saw a man in a sampan laying a driftnet just off Chek Jawa.
Near the Chek Jawa beacon, there was a large boat fishing well within the Chek Jawa boundary, another sampan laying a driftnet, while yet another sampan zoomed between the beacon and the shore.
Here's another view of the large fishing boat with the boardwalk.
A happy ending! It's rambutan season and there's big piles of luscious red rambutans for sale at the Ubin jetty! Thanks to Catherine and her family for a lovely day out at Chek Jawa!
There's lots of reasons to visit Pulau Ubin and Chek Jawa. Come and join the Naked Hermit Crabs for the
next free monthly guided tour and find out more about
Pulau Ubin and explore it on your own.
