Wildlife on a Singapore Nature Hike
Don’t feed the Monkeys
Singapore is known as a Garden City. Singapore’s healthy living goals include increasing the number of nature trails to encourage Singaporeans to get outside to walk. Singapore friends of ours suggested that we hike on the new Rifle Range Nature Trail. Sadly they couldn’t do the hike with us but gave us directions for how to find it and highly recommended its beauty.
We took the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) system to the Beauty World mall. Then, from the 4th floor of the mall, we crossed over the busy road to get to the start of the Nature Trail.
It is a well-maintained trail through a beautiful lush forest. For the most part, we were alone on the trail, although we saw some families with young children. We also saw other older couples like ourselves out for a walk in the forest.
Stopping at the Information Center, we met Jerome Pang, who was hanging some of his recent work showing the wildlife he has captured in the area. He is a volunteer in the park and conducts “art in nature” workshops for the public. His wildlife prints were lovely. I was happy to have met him.
We enjoyed the varied vegetation as we walked viewing the lower forest floor, the climbing vines, the hanging ferns, and the forest canopy. It was a warm day, but overcast so not too hot for us.
As we walked we heard birds chirping in the treetops and insects buzzing all around us. I even saw butterflies, several different types of tiny butterflies, but none of them stopped long enough for a photo.
We walked the trail for an hour until we got to the MacRitchie Reservoir, then turned back. Soon after turning back, I heard Gerad say, “Look monkeys ahead”. Two monkeys were walking along the fence. The female quickly jumped up into a tree and sat watching me. The male sat on the fence for a minute or two scratching and stretching and then jumped up into the tree with the female.
Sometimes when meeting monkeys on hikes, they try to grab anything they can hoping to get some food. These didn’t. They weren’t aggressive towards us at all. Possibly this is because there were signs along the trail saying, “Do NOT feed the monkeys”, so the monkeys in this area do not expect to get any handouts from humans they run into on the trail. These ignored us. We left them monkeying around in a tree as we walked back up the trail.
It was a fun hike. We will try to do it again when we get back to Singapore.
Some other wonderful wildlife stories:
Joel R. Dennstedt All The Wildlife In The World — fabulous photos
Michele Maize I Go Berserk For Wildlife — loads of wildlife photos
Anne Bonfert Wildlife in the City — the city of Zimbabwe
Aarti Tailor My Favorite Shots Of Beautiful Canadian Wildlife — bears, moose, goats and more
