Khao Yai National Park – Day 2
Woke up early, all ready to explore the jungle trails but we were abruptly stopped by the subjects found near to the cabin. lol. Found a mantidfly just 10m away from our balcony!
Behind the scenes shots from Melvyn’s Sony TX5, Nicky’s Galaxy SII, David’s LX5.
- Warm up shot with this beetle
- Lance found a Masked Hunter, seemingly waiting for food beside a patch of eggs
- Portia sp. the intelligent hunter
- Found a Mantidfly just outside the cabin
- Mantidfly caught pooping
- Side view of the Mantidfly
- Head shot. Somehow the eyes did not appear as vibrant as the other species we shot in Singapore.
- Slightly different angle but still dull eyes
- Last shot, as I realized that the shots were not improving. lol
- This spider had a bee in it’s nest and slowly munching the day away
- Front view of the makan
- Dangling high above on the same tree, was this spiny back orb weaver.
- Difficult to light up with the strong sunlight from behind
- Found this lizard near to the canteen where we were having lunch
- First lunch in the park – soup noodles!
- Accompanied by lots of sinful stuff
- Also ordered more fatty stuff to share
- Caught Ben devouring the fatty stuff and ice cream when he claimed that he was going on a diet. There’s him cooking up some new excuse.
- Satisfied with lunch
- Found lots of puddling Common Bluebottles (Graphium sarpedon luctatius) near the stream
- While puddling, this was also peeing to remove excess liquid
- Yep lots of Bluebottles
- We went to take photos at the park’s signage
- And had Ben do some jumps
- Finally got into the first trail!
- Lance taking a snooze
- Interesting web patterns
- Cute little spiny back orb weaver
- A well camouflaged katydid
- Metallic blue beetle
- Seemed like common ants running around, but after taking a picture, realized that it had several wildly protruding hooks. Melvyn later identified them as Fish-hook ants (Polyrhachis bihamata)
- It just kept running about
- Only managed a few shots with the head in focus
- Taking a break!
- Looks like a large flat-backed millipede
- Likes to curl up like any typical millipede
- Resting on a tree log
- A tiny common weevil
- Tortoise beetle
- One of the many lynx spiders we found
- Red and black. Interesting combination.
- The legs also tend to be spread wider than the others we find in Singapore
- And even wider! This lynx spider has relatively longer legs
- Another reddish lynx
- I said that I wanted to find a blue lynx spider, but found this black one instead. On looking closer at the pictures, it does have a tint of blue!
- The blue shows up only under the flash
- Head shot. Looks like a really angry Lynx Spider.
- One of the many harvestman running about
- Yet another Lynx Spider! This time with a prey
- Happily munching away
- Dinner was a giant omelette
- Favorite drink – Honey Lemon Green Tea!
- Got back to the cabin to find this pretty tokay gecko on the wall.
- Guess we found out who made all the weird noises at night!
- Close up. It is actually blue with red spots!
- Final shot before it ran away
- Found lots of ticks in Thailand. Here’s one huge one (over 1cm)
- Macracantha arcuata or previously known as Gasteracantha arcuata
- Tried putting some props behind as background, but looked too unnatural
- The fake background. Shots do not turn out well, so we decided to go for natural setups in the day instead!
- One of the leeches that followed us back. Can see the tiny eyes on the left.
- Feverishly sensing heat around
- Moves about non-stop until it finds a target
- Went back to shoot the long horn spider again
- Trying to get a big question mark
- Okay… this was the best I could get!
- Another visiting moth
- Saw the long horn spider dangling on it’s web, so I took another pic. By then, the sky was already dark.
- Ben wore green, so he was an ideal candidate for nicer background when shooting the visitors to our balcony. lol
The complete album can be viewed here.
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