Bitten by Red Ants

While spending much effort on a soaring eagle, I landed on one fire ant nest. But I told myself this is the best eagle picture I have ever captured.

"Human always stomp their feet when they are happy." A zebra dove coo-cooed a comment. 

"Oh no, there is too much insanity in the dance." A black-naped Oriole exclaimed.


Whatever it is, me and the birds were mutually entertained.

As what we can find in Your Sunday Best.

One Noisy Couple of Zebra Doves

I did not follow the butterflies to fly over the roof top, but when I went to the front yard I saw another couple. A couple of zebra doves, this time.

The male was seen bobbing its head, with tail up, while making loud calls.

It danced around its mate and the later replied with a gentle waltz. It must be a kind of successful courtship, only that the next chapter was in missing pages.

Somehow I found by chance that there were no difference between me and a snake. We both peeped, silently.

One Couple of Butterfly

One morning. I saw one butterfly sinking itself in the lush green in the backyard. No no!! It was actually a mating couple that could easily escape from me, since no noise was heard.

I missed my macro lens and their up close facial expression at the same time.

They were disturbed on the other way, and had to continue flying reluctantly. But were again followed and peeped at different places.

The couple definitely hated me a lot, and decided to fly over the roof top finally.

I was annoyed then how good they were to perform a speedy synchronized dance in the air.

In the Woods

If pebbles divide ocean and land, thin line of trees then separate sky and earth. When getting tired of flying high or running low, we always go back to this boundary.

We are not alone for most of the time.

We may not, sometimes.

How sweet is a Hibiscus?

How sweet is a Hibiscus? It may be a very scientific question but a couple of brown-throated sunbirds would like to tell you in a different way.

I met a couple of brown-throated sunbirds about two months ago. They spent hours eating rambutan and I spent hours observing them. Rambutan is real sweet, I know.

When I saw this female sunbird spending the morning on the Hibiscus, I should know how sweet this flower is.

Not only the flower is, the place must be as sweet and romantic for this male sunbird.

He had a date in this beautiful morning.

But only to find I always disturbed them inch by inch whenever they got closer. I would also like to get closer by all means.

Weaver ants and us

These Weaver ants came out from my book of nature. I chased them back while they were stretching their necks peeping the surrounding, and before they started to weave their nest in my house, on my bed and on my body, and before they crawled from my toe to my forehead, and before they called my home their home.

I flip to chapter 11092010, they seem to live a normal life over there.

Some of us make our way up to the top of Cerok Tokun, while the others are descending.

At the same time, we would limit ourselves to a narrow path though it can be in fact wider. We always follow our experience or the pheromones trail.

When I am climbing up the guardrail to gaze over a sea of clouds, one of the ant never miss the chance to enjoy the same.

The ant then pass the story to other through tapping with the antennae. We also tap on each other's shoulder, and telling how good the weather is and blah blah blah.

Finally, we are alone; and somehow it is good to be alone for some time.

Kingfisher

It started to drizzle but I decided to take a chance; I continued to cycle around the sport complex in Kangar knowing that birds, though never participate in any games, must be perching here and there in this quiet place, in the morning.

I was proven right when a Kingfisher was spotted beside a drain. There were no fish inside this small drain. I knew that, and it should know as well.

It changed my simple understanding about a Kingfisher in the next minute: a "fisher" catches not only fish, this king feeds on centipedes as well.

But then, is a butterfly a piece of butter that flies? Maybe a butterfly will let me know the next time I visit Cerok Tokun.

A Desperate Fantail

I met this fantail early in the morning at my in-laws' place in Kangar. My experience tells me that it should be very alert to human being; it was not true this time.

I had had enough close-ups of it; I even move around for some different angles without fearing of losing it.

I used to test their response by inching closer during photography, but it was this fantail that tested me this time, thus there were countless funny body languages all the way.

It tried to think and to judge the situation; it would not leave anyhow.

It flew away, only leaving the post and landed on the nearby black bin.

We met each other for the first time; it never had my track record. I was not labelled as a good guy on my face, even if I was, it could never understand.

So, what had made it ignoring the potential dangers and stayed for so long on the ground? There was no magic trick nor extraordinary power by me, except a mesh of rotten oranges laying between me and the bird.

We used to say: Men die for wealth, and birds die for food. There are endless examples on the portion of human being, but I only grasped the meaning on the later fully after today.

An Egret and An Alien

My wife asked whether I wanted to go hiking this morning. This was a tricky question. I must be an "alien" if go hiking at this time while my family is still preoccupied by new year mood. So I'll talk nothing more than what was discovered when we were having some cool moments under a mango tree. It is scorching hot this few days.

An egret was found perching on this mango tree with the same purpose as well. The bare paddy fields in Kangar were simply not the right places to go right now.

The egret might have not seen me, while trying to have a little bit of funny moments.

"I can be as big as a dinosaur!"


"I am a bird, I can fly."


But it never flew at the end because it was not an egret nor a bird.

And I managed to know who were an alien finally. You are certainly not.

Slow down day, May-5

Come across this quote by George Carlin, "Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong."

If you are one of them, I am now offering somewhere that you can go for a picnic. It is big enough for a couple, though not big enough for a sleep. Anyhow why bother so much if it is just for a short stay. You can hug, kiss this tree, and even have your confession here, where there is no long queue at all.

The picnic site does anyhow look like a toad, a giant toad. I shall not elaborate further, but once you have settled yourself down, the tree will then repeat its story, the mind game between a tree and a toad. Just like what I have heard before, and some others in the past, and that giant toad is now tamely a follower of the tree, as you can see.

Where is this place? It is at Bukit Ayer Recreation Park, Perlis.

This may be a short post for today, because I tend to slow down too much this time until the next word is hard to catch up with the previous, and I have to tell, though it may be too late to you, it is Slow Down Day at the time I am writing, according to an email I received this evening.

For your health, take time to slow down. Smell some flowers, watch the birds, take a walk, do whatever you want to any tree you can see, it will not get angry.

"When it comes to love, sometimes tree's a crowd"

I read a tall tale in Reader Digest about a girl who married to a quite and polite spouse. He would never answer back nor ran around. And when she divorced him, he was just wooden without any contest.

The girl had actually been told by a fortune teller that only her second marriage would work. It was easy to get divorced from a tree than a human, this was the only reason her parents married her to a nearby oak.

If I am the parents, instead of marrying her to an oak, I can marry her to some other innocent tropical trees that I know better and talk to frequently.

How about the one that cares to look at mirror day and night asking "mirror mirror on water, who is the most handsome of them all" or our thinnest little brother that grows tall among the rugged?

May be the richest in the forest with a chain of glaring jewels hanging down from his neck, or the tree that is actually a lovely Dalmatian in disguise.

Or simply get married to a banana tree that is easily found in the neighbourhood. After all, banana is still delicious and good to eat after the divorce.

Another Ant Story

I was mistaken to think it as a bird nest when I looked from a distance, actually it was a capacious nest built by red weaver ants. Added more pain to the mistake when I got close for a confirmation, the red ants moved silently but quickly to my legs, when I jumped up and down tried to shake off all of them. Only my luck was with me to get rid of them before they started their attacks which would then result with a few burning and very painful bites. Otherwise I always use my saliva as an immediate cure, somehow it helps psychologically. My recommendation to your laughter is to try it out first, and please stop laughing right now, although you think it as very extreme soft.

It is advisable not to get near the tree for no purpose once the nests are spotted. There must be colonies of red ants busy wandering around. They maybe on the trunk, the branches, the leaves and even on the ground that spreads a couple of meters from the perimeter of the tree. Again, this is experience that talk, Alice may not know that.

I found a few of the nests on the tree actually. A close up look showed the leaves were bound together by the excreted silk. These weaver ant's nests to my belief must be strong and impermeable to water in order to face frequent tropical rain storms.

I rather not to talk too much and to move away fast before I got into trouble with the big red ants again. Before that, the size of the ants is measured at about 10mm in length. How big is 10mm? It is equavalent to a couple of hours of pain if you are bitten. Sorry, I can only relate the red ants to my bad experience.

Is it a Kite?

There were quite a handful of birds that I met during my trip to Kangar which I have failed to do at my Cerok Tokun trekking trails.

I did see earlier when farmers burnt the paddy field to get ready for next season of sowing, in the midst of smoke, birds flew around a "food fiesta". They were busy catching insects which tried to escape from the fire. There are abundant of food sources here.

While wandering around, I detected a small bird stayed atop a tree. It was easier to be seen on a bare branch.

When I moved my camera, I saw something. I was very firm to tell it was a kite, and was not a bird, a plane, superman nor UFO. It makes my life easier than solving the bird's identity.

I looked back then, the bird has disappeared.

Has the bird camouflaged itself as a kite, or the kite was actually a bird earlier? My problem arose again.