At Pulau Kukup, the second-largest mangrove island in the word, I conquered one of my fears... my fear of heights. Arriving on the island, one of the first obstacles we had to cross to get across the river was a 30m suspension bridge, about 3 storeys above ground. It was VERY narrow... and shaky. I looked straight ahead and shuffled across. Yeah! (Actually, that one was ok. It was the aery, or tower hide, which had me trembling a little.) The aery, somewhat hailed as the central structure of attraction at Kukup, is a 6-storey high tower. The wooden planks of steps were see-through ones, and when one climbs up one can see what's down below. Look to the sides a tad and one can see straight down to the ground. With the Buloh staff's encouragement and urging, I made it all the way to the top, still taking regular breathes, and came back down! Hee...
That aside, the little walk on the island was more like an information exchange session. We shared our knowledge of the Buloh mangroves and its inhabitants with the manager, and she told us about the differing fauna and flora of Kukup. Kukup's animals were all so tiny and slim... the mudskippers were smaller, fishes of the same species were much, much tinier, spiders were minute, and even the grey herons were less plump than those we were used to seeing. Not a sign of a lack of nutrition though... the area is rich and vibrant. Our conservation officers speculate that many of them might be sub-species.
For me the highlight was the sighting of an extremely well-camouflaged moth. It immediately reminded me of the famous Peppered moths, those which are so popularly used in case studies of evolutionary theories. I don't know what this one is called, though, but I shall find out. Two-tailed spiders were aplenty, as were mudskippers, fiddler crabs, and crabs of the tiniest of sizes and the brightest of colours. We saw a wasp parasiting a poor catepillar. Terns circled around us and dive-bombed fish as we enjoyed our seafood lunch on the mainland jetty.
So that was Kukup. It was another long journey up to the heronry at Yong Peng. The sight was greeted us was well worth all the travelling... for just about 100m or so from a row of shophouses and residential terraces, right off the main rod, was a patch of shrubs and grassland full of herons - the Black-crowned night heron and Purple heron. It was as urban as a heronry could get. The herons - about 30 odd of them - were oblivious to us humans with our scopes and monster lens and cameras snapping away at them from not that far away. The hour and a half that we were given was not enough... I could've spent hours and hours at the site. It was an amazing arrangement... that heronry. Later we learnt that there was a dam not far off, where the birds did their fishing, but we still wondered what drew them to that particular patch of green and not some other area. Wild, untouched lands were all around, and yet they chose to live and nest at a location so close to human activity.
We were all reluctant to leave; we still had to journey home, but not without first stopping by at some shopping centre and grab some local munchies!
At the end of the day I had a little conversation with fellow volunteer Pui San, and in these words he summed up what we were thinking: "The Buloh volunteers and staff... are a tightly-knit community. There's a strong family spirit... a strong bond between the volunteers, and that's very good."
Pics from last Sat at Sungei Buloh: Birds | Insects (and a pair of copulating horseshoe crabs)
Pics from the outing: Pulau Kukup
 Mangrove shoreline of Kukup |  Moth on bark |
 |  Purple heron |
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