Laundry...

... is one of my top planning priorities for every trip. This time, to save some cash in order that I might have enough resources to feed my duck, I have decided to stuff in enough clothes to last my entire ten days across the North Island. For this journey, I am not obliged to lug the usual piles of printed matter that weigh down my Samsonite, and casual wear will do for much of the tour, so there should be plenty of space in the bag for my precious pink panties briefs and holey socks. In fact, there might even be room to hide a rare duck or two! Kiwis might be a little more difficult, given their overlong beaks and oversized feet, but perhaps I could pass one off as a furbaby.

Nice as it might seem, this is not a trip that I am looking forward to personally, for all its professional value. I'd rather have joined Mr Tree and Azmi on their recent expedition to Palawan, an islandic outpost of Sundaland that harbours endemics as beautiful as they are threatened. Evidence of Palawan's former status as a part of the Sunda shelf comes from both the flora and fauna of the island. The endemic aquatic aroid Cryptocoryne pygmaea points to the existence of ancient waterways that once linked Palawan to Borneo, where cogeneric relatives still thrive in dwindling swamplands.

The album of images that Mr Tree sent me is bewildering and bedazzling in its richness, and I barely know what to make of the wealth of species captured in digital film and approached only thanks to the encroachment of roads and settlements into Palawan's primary rainforests. A jumping spider (above) startles my imagination, confounding the mind with its tribal patchwork of colours. Why has the cospecific selection for mate prowess resulted in such a display of pigmented exuberance? 

Further examples of sexual dimorphism come from Palawan's aviary of endemic birds, including the Palawan peacock-pheasant (Polyplectron emphanum), a jungle fowl that numbers in the mere thousands. Like many other Philippine species, it may only be a matter of time before the twin blights of native poverty and unsustainable populations drive this creature and its ancient shelters of Dipterocarp pillars to the same irreversible path taken by the moa and huia of New Zealand.

Comments

[Angela]

Hi, I've read your past entries with interest! Do you have the address of Nonya Bong?

[budak]

Sorry, Nonya Bong closed down sometime last year!