The annotated budak

Ghost catching

The Lost Coast consists of a broad cove protected by a long seawall to the south and two straight miles of strand marred by a fat arm of sand near its northern end. Above the foreshore is a scrubland of casuarinas, acacias and lalang, which probably support enough rodents, reptiles and seed-eating birds to sustain the appetites of visiting harriers, kites and falcons. Boggier portions attract oriental pratincoles and red-wattled lapwings, while plovers, both resident and recurrent, have discovered a larder of small bodies in the flats that have formed beyond this artificial coastline.

With few human visitors save birders (who keep their feet dry) and boaters (who have little reason to set foot on the flats), a number of resident ghost crabs were confident enough to emerge long before dusk. A few sat on the sand and budged only with reluctance, as if the approach of beach apes in black booties and even a lens in their personal space triggered no alarm in these phantom menaces, which scour tropical shores for carcasses, other crabs and even the hatchlings of sea turtles. Hawksbills have been known to nest in the vicinity and this deserted cove could well harbour the nests of visiting chelonians before it undergoes a second reclamation for more thrilling spectacles. Sand dollars, button snails and other benthic detritivores, however, probably form the bread and butter of these nocturnal predators, which share their hunting grounds with carnivorous gastropods, quick stars and flattened fishes.

As the sky faded to deeper shades of blue and threatened to dispel the magic of a rare landing, more ghost crabs appeared at the water's edge, their box-like carapaces sidling just a little faster than the war helmets of bonnet snails. Now furtive, the crabs no longer braved the risks of close proximity, backing off when cornered with eight-legged trots, which then switched to a six-footed sprint into the surf where they shifted gears once more and buried themselves in the loose sand. Other observers have observed a full gallop on four limbs and clocked the crabs at up to 4 metres a second. Lanky proportions, power-packed muscles and a thrusting gait help drive the animals to pole position in systema brachyura. But speed alone is not enough when the crabs encounter predators with greater persistence and sharpness. For life in a zone of dangerous creatures is a perpetual race to catch the new strandings of every tide and run out of reach of smarter threats.

Shear spots

There is, it is said, a burly man who haunts the neighbourhood, wearing a bare back and brandishing a large pair of scissors. He's no whippersnapper, it seems, and there is considerable doubt as to the purpose of his tool, which appears to be an open invitation to play an old game, with the proviso that any attempt to rock his move or paper his losses be done at a safe distance.

The man is said to hang out at a nearby bus stop with a roof that resembles the segmented carapace of a giant isopod. But as luck would have it, his path has yet to cross mine and a fondness for short cuts through void decks may account for this happy series of near-misses. What catches the eye in the corridors and sheltered walkways, rather, are the bees, butterflies and beetles who fly around the sharp corners of the estate and break its stiff lines with raw colours and rounded contours. Joining them in this roar of wings are moths with waspish stripes and a weak, floating flight. For all their prowess in biochemistry, the arctiids display a careless disregard for those who have forgotten how to recognise signs of danger, planting themselves on perches that cut too close to neighbours with no love for nature and a loathing for all things that bug.

Quicksand star

Sand-sifting sea stars in the genus Astropecten, a group distinguished by flat, paxillaeted bodies bearing prominent marginal arm plates and lateral spines, are not rare on the northern and eastern shores of Singapore. The animals appear to favour sandy flats with loose, unconsolidated sediments, unlike another 'common' sea star which thrives in somewhat siltier substrates. Prey availability may be another factor for their occurence, as Astropecten is a benthic predator that lacks the ability of more advanced asteroids to evert its stomach and 'graze' on organic matter or sessile growth. Instead, the astropectinids chase discrete prey, which they swallow whole before expelling the indigestible portions.

The sea stars are catholic eaters, having been recorded to consume fish, crustaceans, worms, ascidians and other echinoderms. Ciliary feeding, in which edible matter is trapped in mucus and transported to the mouth, is also performed, but this is likely an option for lean times. Where the hunting is good, the stars' streamlined form confers a pace that probably surprises motile prey and their slender central disc belies a buccal cavity with the disturbing ability to expand and engulf larger or a greater number of food items. Small molluscs, however, are their preferred quarry and the presence of date mussels and button snails may account for the stars' abundance or absence in otherwise suitable habitat.

Tiny but still visible paxillae, parasol-like structures that help maintain a flow of water over the respiratory papullae, on the dorsal surface and long spines that work like the teeth of a spading fork arm the stars for a dig through sand. Aided by dextrous tube feet, the animals glide over the seabed with disconcerting speed and sink out of sight with near-equal ease to pursue buried prey or avoid trouble. Two possible species, one plain and the other patterned, are often seen at shores such as Changi and Chek Jawa, but a quite different Astropecten was spotted yesterday at a coast beyond the reach of casual beachcombers. 

With an orange underside and nearly twice as wide as its commoner kin, this individual was a rich reddish-brown, turning paler on the fringes, with marginal plates in a pretty shade of blue. Darker pigments surrounded the base of short spines on the upper surface of the plates, tracing a prominent rim of dashes just behind a perimeter of long primary spines. Almost as fleet-footed as its smaller cousins, the star employed a curious means of burying itself: the primary spines on each arm would be folded like the leaflets of a sensitive mimosa, firstly at the base, followed by those at the tip in a domino fall of slow motion. The extremities then dug in, causing the surrounding grains to cave in as if the seabed were sucking the star into its heart of darkness and consuming its children before the tide comes in and time runs out for this coast of reclaimed fortunes.

Belly afoot

Time-out from the daily scuffle with the Meep.

Beaker and better

Halfbeaks are among the most commonly seen fishes in the mangroves. Tidal creeks and larger rivers often swarm with untidy schools of these surface dwellers, which tend to gather around anchorages such as bridges and trees, perhaps to elude open water predators or because that is where the feeding is best. A few, smaller species, such as this strikingly marked resident of Pulau Subar Darat, can also be found on intertidal reef flats, typically in the company of nervous silversides, where they haunt the topmost reaches of the water column and snap up floating particles of vegetation or zooplankton.

Having stiff, slender bodies with largely plain colours, hemiramphids would probably draw little attention from lay ichthyophiles were it not for their bizarre mouthparts. The upper mandible tapers as one might expect in a fish of such slim proportions, but the lower half protrudes to unreasonable lengths. Those who have taken a closer look, however, have discovered that the elongated portion is not a jaw sensu stricto but a chin of unusual length. A sensory function has been posited for the organ, but another, albeit untested, hypothesis that comes to mind concerns the adaptive benefits of being just a little harder to swallow than one's build might suggest. Whatever the answer may be, the halfbeaks have cornered a happy niche for themselves in lakes, rivers, mangroves and inshore seas worldwide, where they ride the bellyside of swells and skim off the first fruits of life that fall or form on this cream of sunlight and seasonal liquidity.

The seagrasses and seaweeds that bloom and bust on local shores also harbour other fish of similar shape and size to the halfbeaks but lacking the unequal bite and displaying a marked preference for the midwater. Usually greenish with a row of light markings on the flanks, these fish are thought to be post-larval sphyraenids bidding their time before they grow into bigger game. Adult barracuda, far too large to be satisfied with the fry of shallow flats, have been spotted in healthier reefs and landed at various angling hotspots around the island, suggesting that a sporting population of these toothy hunters still survives despite a regular gauntlet of hooks and the far harder challenge of making a living in a shrinking sea.

The birds are back

A flock of plovers had gathered on the edge of an artificial lagoon that will soon be partitioned and filled in until the seabed chokes on ash and dies beneath a blanket of soil. From afar, there appeared to be nothing on the sliver of sand that separates a slope of rocks from the high water. But we press on and flush a sequence of birds with every few yards down the bund. Each flight of Mongolian, grey and pacific golden plovers, some bearing traces of their summer dress, skims the water with Arctic whistles and circles the bank before landing some distance away.

No larger than pigeons and doves but wielding stouter bills and delicate, cursorial limbs, the plovers had arrived from steppe and tundra, seeking the warmth of equatorial flats. Some will continue their journey until they reach shores of southern summer. But a few are happy to linger and feed off the neglected flanks of a landfill where a tidal cove of mud and silt has sucked in the spawn of the sea and bristles with invertebrate life. Having traded their courtship hues of blacks, golds and russets for a wintercoat of grey, tan and tawn, the migrants join their resident kin on the lower reaches of the seawall where they chase insects, polychaetes and ambulant shellfish in an invisible flurry of avian activity.

Other visitors from the far north lurk in the mangroves, where they await the daily rise of the outlying mudflats and sandbars. Trapped in landlocked pools or rocky cauldrons, crabs, shrimp, worms, clams, snails and tiny fish then face an assault of bills that probe, peck, stab and sweep for prey in murky waters. Whimbrels reach into deep holes to pluck out small crustaceans that are rinsed before a gullet trip. Greenshanks lunge at small fish and shrimp in the shallows, while common sandpipers forage like feathered mice over boulders, roots and sand, their heads and tails in constant motion with clockwork bobs. 

Grey herons criss-cross the island on forays between a nearby rookery and their feeding ground. Brahminy kites by the dozen circle the landfill's active cells, lured perhaps by rodents and reptiles that were in turn drawn to the scent of burning swarms. A recently filled cell lies barren by the bund, the trunks and bare twigs of a rare mangrove tree holding fort in a scorched corner where hardier coastal shrubs still survive and provide perches for blue-tailed bee-eaters and a young tiger shrike.

Spotted doves pitter and patter on the weed-lined track. A gang of scaly-breasted munias erupt from the reeds by a fan flower tree, piping and psitting as they head towards the imagined safety of reclaimed grasslands. Chipping in false alarm, paddyfield pipits, whose plumage gives the waders a run for their protection money, rocket off with a metallic din before they plummet into another patch of brown.

And shortly before twilight, two sea eagles head inland, their fingers almost touching between lazy brushes of broad wings. The barn and pacific swallows who swing through the rhu trees and rest on signs of prohibition soon vanish, surrendering the sky to clicking bats who feast on a flight of moths as savanna nightjars wheel over the bund, interrupting a slow walk back to the pier with sharp cries of excitement for yet another season of birds on the roost.