Earth Day with kids at Pasir Ris mangroves!

Crab! Fish! Snake! And other exciting encounters by kids on the Pasir Ris mangrove boardwalk!

What a great way to celebrate Earth Day!


The mysterious mounds made by mudlobsters are 'condos' riddled with crab holes and full of Tree-climbing crabs!

Dad has found a little caterpillar hanging on a piece of silk! Amazing!

One of the sharp-eyed young ladies found a tiny red bug! This is the juvenile of the Cotton-stainer bugs usually found on Sea hibiscus.

One of young gentlemen has a found a bagworm. It's a little caterpillar that has created a little bag around itself for protection!

As usual, there are lots of Giant mudskippers everywhere! There are two in this photo, can you spot them?

Ivan shares more about the fascinating Nipah palms.

Sankar did an awesome job for his first guiding session with the Naked Hermit Crabs! Thankfully, Kelvin blogged about Sankar's group in this awesome post about the Cheekiemonkies! 

Photo by Kelvin Ang

Our favourite spot is at the jetty on Sungei Tampines!

Here, we can see nesting herons, spot all kinds of fishes and more!

The kids spot a pair of Collared kingfishers. Later, we saw a Night heron settling down for the evening hunting shift, while the large herons were settling in for the night in their nests.

In the water, we saw a Red-eared slider, a turtle that is not native to Singapore. This turtle comes with the pet trade and often end up in our waters as irresponsible owners release them when they are no longer wanted. These introduced alien species can disturb our native wildlife and affect our natural ecosystems. This is why we should NOT release our unwanted pets into our nature places.

The visitors are great at spotting stuff! Like this Malayan water monitor lizard swimming in the water. Alas, it ducked into a burrow before we could show it to the rest.

A strange long fish is seen swimming in the murky water. Ivan suggests it is an arowana, another non-native fish that was probably released into our waters. We also saw Halfbeaks and Archerfishes!

I missed the 'flying dragon' a little gliding lizard that Sankar saw, but Kelvin shared it on his blog. I also missed the Dog-faced watersnake that all the kids saw near the jetty. But on the way back after the trip, Ivan spots this Dog-faced water snake in a burrow!

Sadly, we didn't see the sunbird nest at the toilet that we saw on our last rainy trip.

After the walk, we have great fun drawing what we saw. Pei Yan gets all the kids sorted out for the drawing session.

Kids really focus on the important things. One of the most important things in mangroves is MUD. Lots and lots of it.

These young artists are so enthusiastic about the drawing session that they brought their own colouring pencils!

Sng Jay Kai shares a dramatic drawing of some key finds of the day!

I'm always stunned by how much the kids notice on our trips. Here Fion, aged 8, has a wonderful labelled drawing of her favourite finds.

Jared's favourite spot is obviously Sungei Tampines, its banks crowded with all kinds of interesting stuff!

Thanks also to Liza and Yenata for this great entry to the Naked Hermit Crab guestbook.

Here's all the lovely drawings shared after our walk.

Thanks to the 40 mums, dads and kids and friends who came for our walk! And special thanks to Pei Yan, Sankar and Ivan for guiding.

Come join us for our next evening walk at Pasir Ris mangroves on 28 Apr (Sat) at 5pm. More details!

Posts by others about this trip

• Amazing dad Kelvin Ang shares what the Cheekiemonkies saw. See also the family's other mad adventures.