Kayak at Sungai Jelutong

Sungai Jelutong is a river on Pulau Ubin, with its mouth near Ketam Island. We kayaked over there on November 20th, 2021.

It was a cloudy day with sporadic light rain, great for kayaking but not really photogenic.

We launched from Pasir Ris Park and Beach, and paddled across 2 kilometer wide Johor strait to reach the river. The water was calm at this stretch of the strait, it felt like kayaking on a lake!

Launching from Pasir Ris Beach

The Sungai Jelutong is left to the Green Buoy 

We reached the shoreline of Pulau Ubin in about 30 minutes. The shoreline is mostly densely forested, and beautiful. We saw a group of kayaks paddling toward Sungai Jelutong, we later followed them into a branch we did not know was there!

The river is clean and calm as well, we did not even feel it was flowing, likely due to the high tide. Paddling upstream, we saw birds flying overhead, and heard them chirping in the trees - you can hear the chirping from the video below. We did see a sandpiper hopping from snag to snag just in front of our kayak for a while.

A rocky patch near the mouth of Sungai Jelutong

The river mouth looking from upstream

A kayak trip organized by commercial outfitter

A common sandpiper

Except the one group of kayaks, we had the river just for us most of the time until around noon time. It was us immersed in nature! The river was scenic with various mangroves lined on both banks of the river most of the time. I could not name them, but could tell they were different because of different flowers or fruits they bore.

We paddled to (almost) every branch of the river, and some were not even on the map - they were there because of high tide. When we paddled out of the river around 1pm, we could see the river was flowing outward! Tide was receding. (Note: November 20th, high tide was 2.9 m at ~ 11am, low tide was 0.4 m at ~ 5:45 pm.).

On the way back to Pasir Ris beach, we went to Ketam Island which was by the mouth of Sungai Jelutong. On this side of the island, it is densely wooded, another paradise for birds, which were heard but not seen. We did manage to capture a kingfisher on camera.

A small beach on Ketam Island

Big trees on Ketam Island

A kingfisher

As we were about to cross Johor Strait, three ships were heading our way from northwest, and later one giant freight ship from east. We waited until they all past the area before crossing … in fact we paddled in parallel to the ship pathway as seen in the kayak trail map between mile marker 8 and 9. We were back to Pasir Ris after 1:30pm. We paddled over 10km in 3 and half hours.

This ship was the first of three ships crossing 

Adjust our kayak orientation for a good picture and be ready to cross the strait

Note - despite the cloudy sky, the UV index was still high. One has to have protection from UV. We wore sun sleeves and leggings to protect ourselves.

Sun Sleeves and leggings for prevention of "Sun burn" - the high UV

Lower Peirce Trail

The Lower Peirce trail is a short boardwalk inside Lower Peirce Reservoir Park over wetland. It is connected to Oncopersermum trail, which eventually leads to the Dam which forms the Kallang River source. The total round trip distance from trail head to the Dam is ~ 3 km.

What attract us to the trail is exactly its short length, and also the chance to see some wildlife we had not seen before at Singapore. 

The boardwalk extended from inside the forest to the lake shore

A cove of Lower Piece Reservoir lake 

a corner of the reservoir

It did not disappoint - the trails are shaded in the woods, the forest is mythic, there are a few fauna we did not see before, colorful dragon flies, white throat kingfisher, wild boars, common sun skink. We also observed different behavior in the monkeys.

dragon flies (blue Riverdamsel) mating

White Throat Kingfisher

A wild boar family - the father boar showed up later

Common Sun Skink - a reptile 

a monkey eating fruit at top of a palm tree away from its troop

A very old monkey? note the white beard 

Eating Clam?

The Birds outside our Windows

Our building is very close to Singapore Botanic Garden, which is about 500 meters away. It is also the tallest building in the radius of 1 kilometers. What makes our 8th floor apartment unique is that we are about the heights of the big trees surrounding our building. 

Birds fly and chirp around us daily. They are frequently heard but not seen. Especially we hear black-naped orioles chirping  right outside our bedroom windows, around 7am! 

But there are special occasions.

Black naped orioles

I open all the windows of our apartment in the early morning. I could hear the oriole(s) in the tree right outside our bedroom window  but I could not spot them until a few days ago. 

It was a beautiful morning, I heard a black naped oriole again, I leapt out of the bed and saw it right outside the window (about 10 feet away!) , pruning its feathers and made calls from time to time. It stayed there for so long I managed to record its actions on video - as one may tell the bird songs recorded were from other birds nearby, not the oriole. What a beautiful way to start a day.

Black-nape  oriole

 

This morning despite a cloudy sky, a black naped oriole stopped by again, and making calls and surveying the landscape. Its presence and songs brightened the day for us.

Note - per our observations, there are at least one pair orioles around our building, and likely a nest and more orioles.

Rainbow Lorikeets

On a rainy day in October, I heard bird chirping from many birds just outside our living room window,  thought it was from mynahs. After 10~15 minutes, they were still making noise. I went to the window and saw red dots in trees, then colorful dots, many rainbow colored birds right outside our window! they played in big trees, swoop around,  some tried to stand on the tips of tree branches and fell off ( or dove?).  Later they formed a flock circling two loops and dispersed into trees, a few minutes later they were gone. 

We spotted Lorikeets and Parakeets in Botanic Garden later, but they were so high in the trees, we could not see them as clearly as we did to watch them at the tree-top level!

Many Facets of West Coast Park

West coast park is a little brother to the much larger, more popular east coast park. It is located at the southwest Singapore, on the shoreline facing the giant harbor, PSA Pasir Panjang Terminal, and  Singapore Multipurpose terminal.

The Ships and Giant Industrial Equipment

When we got to the shoreline at west coast park, the boats, ships, huge cranes, and many other industrial structures filled our eyes.

harbor terminal right outside the park

The Birds

As we were looking at the man made structures, a big bird swoop in and landed in a tree by the pier. It tuned out to be a striated heron. It was so close to me, I could see the pattern on its feathers through camera. As we walked along the shore we saw a hawk flying overhead, with a flock of crows chasing it. Lily saw the hawk diving into water, supposedly catching fish. 

We also saw a couple of small birds sitting atop of trees by the marsh garden, and a pink-necked green pigeon in the sea of green leaves.  

Then we saw a humming bird or sunbird, suspended in the air with its wings rapidly flapping near car park #2, drinking nectar from a flower,  unfortunately I did not catch it on my camera. I did mange to caught a tiny song bird on camera while it was chirping, presumably, Bell Miner, according to Google lens. 

In the Car Park #1 area, by the ponds, I heard rattling like bird chirping, and we saw a blue feathered kingfisher in the flight over the pound, and landed in a palm tree. 

This seems to be a good place for bird watching and photographing since there were quite a few photographers wandering around with large lenses. 

striated heron

pink-necked green pigeon

Bell Miner - it is smaller than the tree leaf!

The Monkeys

By now, sighting of Monkeys, the long-tailed macaques,  in Singapore, is so frequent, it is not anything special any more. What was special today was that we witnessed a baby Monkey overcome obstacles by trying its own approach first, and followed its parents' example later. 

The monkey parents got over the top of a bridge by jumping from a metal rail. The baby monkey did not follow its parents, but trying to climb from under the overhang, like climbing a tree. After three failed attempts, it followed its parents' example, by jumping from the rail and reunited with its mom.

The Cannon Ball Trees

We saw cannon ball trees many time before at Fort Canning Park. What was unique here at west coast park was that, there are many cannon ball trees, and quite a few of them have many cannon balls, compared to none or only one cannon ball from cannon ball trees at Fort Canning areas with many fallen flowers. I guess that there were animals eating the flowers or small cannon balls at Fort Canning - so we rarely saw many cannonballs from one cannonball tree.

cannonball tree

Barringtonia 

crepe jasmine

This is a relative small park, but it has very large playground near car park #1. Sustained breeze from the sea along with the grand lawn, make it a good place to fly kites as well.