I’m on a quest. A quest to find a large cluster of glow-in-the-dark mushrooms, also known as bioluminescent mushrooms/fungi. These fascinating little smurfy sprouts tend to appear during the rainy season, and wilts when the blazing sun comes out. Many also do not notice them as few would go exploring our nature reserves in pitch darkness. My quest was partly fulfilled today, with the discovery of a mini cluster of glowing mushrooms. Still looking forward to a really huge cluster, where it would feel like walking through Pandora in the night.

#1 First pair of mushrooms, small, not too bright, but nice!

#2 View from the top, like an umbrella

#3 The bottom reveals the gills where spores would be dispersed from

#4 And then we found some more, not a cluster but 4 in a row wasn’t too bad

#5 A larger and brighter pair, allowed us to see more details

#6 The glow illuminates the surrounding slightly as well

#7 We started to see nicer clusters

#8 Can’t get enough of them!!

#9 Able to see tiny dew drops on the stem

#10 Shot from a slightly lower angle. The “upskirt”

#11 Found 6 together! Not very close together, but still a nice pattern

#12 Aligning all 6 together in the same focal plane was a great challenge

#13 View from the top, this was stacked

#14 And the upskirt!

#15 Another view of the upskirt

Not that many finds, but still a significant milestone! 🙂 Now on to the other finds of the night…

#16 A Net-Casting Spider (Deinopis sp.)

#17 Sleeping bee/wasp?

#18 Ok it wasn’t sleeping, kept moving around!

#19 An unfriendly copper-cheeked frog

#20 Getting a little friendlier.. come’on face me!!!

#21 Best I could do to get it to turn towards me

#22 Resident gecko, always on the same tree but very skittish

#23 Melvyn found this odd-looking katydid

#24 Record shot from the top, has little bits of green and brown on it’s body

#25 Lichen Huntsman, oddly not on a tree bark but prancing on a leaf

#26 A pair of mating Ypsotingis. We called it NN Bug….

#27 Final moments before they separated and ended their tryst

#28 Cute little frog, looked as if it’s hind legs were point the “middle finger”

#29 Slightly higher angle to help with ID

The complete album can be viewed here.

• bioluminescence
• fungi
• singapore