13th March Thurs

On the 13th March, we had our first very early CJ public walk at 8am. Having to pull ourselves out of bed so early in the morning had it rewards too.
A few of us felt more refreshed having to come out before dawn breaks. The others were just surprised at what Chek Jawa had in store for us...

Today, Terry, Leykun were asked to guide a group each while Jane, Jacky, Xiuli hunter seek.
Alyce, Wenpin and I were waiting to guide 3 groups who were late. While Wenpin helped to hunter seek, I slowly head to the floating pontoon to stand guard there.

Along the footpath to the boardwalk, the Calophyllum soulattri was flowering. Beautiful white and yellow flowers donned the tree.

As I walked along the boardwalk, a male jungle fowl appeared at the rocky shores with his 2 female counterparts. Can you spot the female in this photo? They were undisturbed by me and just walked slowly along the rocks.

The tide was still receding when I reached the beginning of the floating pontoon. There were about 10 other visitors there by then. As I looked around for things for them to see, there were about 8 other female / juvenile jungle fowls walking on the rocks behind the boardwalk shelter! This is the 4th time this year I've seen junglefowls in a group at CJ during a guided tour day. What a good year! How true when we often jokes that the jungle fowls only come out to party when we are not surveying them.

8.45am.
As some of the visitors marvelled at the wonderful sight of the fowls. Another surprise beholded us - Out on the seagrass about 80 metres away, there were 5 figures running inland. These figures looked unmistakening familiar and I yelled to the hunter seeker.... "OTTERS!"......These smooth coated otters which appeared larger than the small clawed otters were running inland. Those who ran faster stopped a while appearing to wait for the slower ones. They were heading to RDC area and even hanged around the entrance to RDC before disappearing into the forest.

That's a good 45 minutes that the hunter seekers went down before we spotted them. The otters could had been hanging around the seagrass lagoon during that period. Or came in from the sea from the northern sandbar. A visitor took a video clip while Jacky and Jane took photos. Although the photos were taken too far away, one could see the shape of the otters on the video and photo.

Come think of it. Next time we should follow their trail and take some photos of their footprints also.

What a day! Now everyone is looking forward to morning walks. And dont forget to credit the great work of the hunter seekers...they found a 20cm long sole fish, seahares, horseshoe crab and other common finds. Great work!