I woke up this morning to the sound of thunder, really loud thunder. We get a lot of thunder and lightening here, apparently Singapore has more thunderstorms than any other country. Sometimes the thunder just rumbles around somewhere in the distance without any rain locally, sometimes it's really loud with impressive lightening strikes and sometimes there's not much rain sometimes there's lots of rain.
This morning we had the lot, huge thunder claps, impressive lightening and a torrential downpour. The storm took over an hour to pass and once it had I headed out to the Botanic Gardens.
Whatever the weather the Gardens are always beautiful with something interesting to see and this morning was no exception!
Lots of jungle fowl were out, scratching for worms and insects. There were several hens with their chicks, I never know if there is a specific time of year when local birds lay their eggs here as the temperature is much the same year round but obviously there's something about November that encourages breeding!
As I came close to Swan Lake I could hear high pitch squeaking - otters! Over the last two years wild smooth coated otters have occasionally been spotted in the Gardens, recently they seem to be visiting here more frequently to feast on the big fish in the lakes there.
It was a real treat watching them hunt, diving into the water and a few feet ahead seeing fish leaping out presumably trying to escape the otters, which they seemed to be doing very effectively because over the twenty minutes that I watched the otters hunting up and down the lake they did not seem to catch anything.
Further on this Stork Billed Kingfisher was having more success
Also fishing in the lake was a Little Heron
and a good sized Monitor Lizard
It's quite amazing that there are still lots of fish and terrapins in the lakes with so many predators hunting them!
Many plants had raindrops still on them making for very attractive photos, I only had my phone with me but it takes pretty good photos (although not of the otters unfortunately)
Some new statues have been erected recently in the trellis garden area. They all depict gymnasts balancing on a wire and I think they are beautiful
I have no idea how this thin wire supports the statue, very clever
This gymnast seems to have caught some monkeys in his net
This water feature normally just trickles but due to the huge rainfall we had a few hours previously the water was cascading down
As the sun came out some butterflies appeared
The raindrops were drying up, only a few remain on the underarm of this statue of a girl relaxing in a hammock
On my way out I spotted this plant with a few drops of rain about to fall, the flowers now dry enough for the ants to start feasting
Come rain or shine it's always a pleasure walking in the Botanic Gardens
