Fantastic day out at Chek Jawa Boardwalk

60 visitors - lots of families, kids, moms and pops, groups of friends - came out to explore Chek Jawa with the Crabs during our July walk. As always, we saw lots of interesting stuff and had a great time!

The tide was low enough for us to see the fiddler crabs on the sandy patch below the boardwalk. The kids love to see the male fiddler crabs wave their large claws. We told the kids that the female crabs are there too. Harder to spot, for sure! Some of the kids saw them and were able to describe the female crabs have equal sized claws and sandy colouring. Not bad, kids!

Fiddler crabs (Photo credit: Ian)

This is the location where you can see the fiddler crabs at the edge of the mangroves.

Way out on the sand bar, there were 2 Great-billed herons. The guides had their binoculars and shared them with the visitors. These are magnificent birds standing as tall as 1.1m. What are these birds doing out there on the sand bar? Hunting for fish in the incoming tide! Such resourceful creatures! We have seen these Great-billed herons many times.

Great-billed herons

Ian's group spotted this Collared kingfisher along the coastal boardwalk. This is our most common kingfisher species in Singapore, generally spotted at the coastal areas. You can however see them in our gardens too, so do look out for these kingfishers near your home! You often find them flying around in pairs.

Collared kingfisher (Photo credit: Ian)

Can you see it? That's a draco lizard up on the trunk of the rubber tree! You may also call them 'flying lizards'. They have flaps of skin that becomes sort of a 'wing' when unfurled, allowing these lizards to glide from branch to branch. How cool is that! While in flight, the long tail acts like a rudder to help the lizard aim where it wants to land. Even more cool! These lizards are common in the forests of Southeast Asia.

Draco (Photo credit: Ian)

The wild boars were there near the Punai Hut area at the end of our walk. The piglets have grown bigger! Compare with photos taken in April when they still had their 'watermelon' stripes on them. This time, we spotted about 6 piglets, and several sub-adults. Looks like a mixed brood.

We love our visitors! Thank you for signing up with us, and we hope you enjoyed the outing as much as we have conducting the tour for you. We are sorry that we had to turn down many requests for places due to a shortage of guides. We hope to keep these walks running, so there will always be another trip to sign up for.

(Photo credit: Min Lin)

(Photo credit: Min Lin)

We usually end our nature walks with a drawing session, allowing both kids and adults to express their thoughts of the trip.

Little Sophia, age 5, draws this mudskipper in the mangrove. She added the boardwalk, quite an accurate interpretation, I would say! The little kids always enjoy the nature outings. They would help us look for creatures, point out the tiniest crabs, and ask lots of questions. I've never met a kid who is not fascinated with the natural world.

And this drawing is shared by another group.

Our next walk is on 22nd August, and the online registration form is open! Do sign up.

Finally, a round of thanks goes out to our volunteer guides - Tim, Sumita, Min Lin, Ivan, Ian, PY and LK!!