Sarawak: Damselfies at Semenggoh

The Semenggoh Wildlife Centre is one of Kuching's best-known tourist attractions. The vast majority of visitors are here to see the rehabilitated, semi-wild orangutans, and pay little if any attention to the forest where they live or the other creatures in it.  My visit to Semenggoh on October 1, 2014, was therefore quite out of the ordinary - I was not there to see the orangutans at all, but only to poke around a bit along the stream by the entrance (a point a had a bit of difficulty explaining to the entrance guards.)

The strream, I thought, might be a good place for forest damselflies.  Though I didn't find anything new, the three species I did encounter were particularly attractive.  Heliocypha biseriata males (family Chlorocyphidae) glow with patches of iridescent pink and blue, and flash metallic wing-patches at each other in mid-air territorial combats.  

The females are admittedly less impressive, though handsome nonetheless.

Prodasineura verticalis (family Platycnemididae) is a particularly dainty and colourful dragonfly, though it can be hard to spot against a dark bacground.

This lovely male Vestalis damselfly. perched on a leaf over the stream, has a longer-than-usual abdomen and may therefore be the endemic V. beryllae (see the note about this beautiful but difficult-to-identify genus in my previous post).

I found a male Tyriobapta torrida presumably guarding territory along the stream (this species otherwise tends to perch vertically on tree trunks (hence the English name "Treehugger"), where the mottled females blend in well with the bark.

Sarawak has an interesting freshwater fish fauna, and I found a few examples in the stream.  The Freshwater Halfbeak (Zenarchopteridae), as its name implies, belongs to a group of fishes that are largely marine, but invade rivers from the sea (a secondarily freshwater fish).

The Sarawak Rasbora (Rasbora sarawakensis), on the other hand, is a primary freshwater fish whose ancestors presumably reached Borneo when it was still attached to the Asian mainland.

Above water, the streamside vegetation attracted this rather ghostly-looking Leafhopper (Cicadellidae)...

...and this butterfly, which I believe to be a Purple Bush Brown (Mycalesis orseis).

Finally, as I frequently do here, I am posting a photo of an attractive bankside plant that I simply cannot identify - firstly, because it is attractive, and secondly, in the hope that some of my more botanicaly inclined readers will let me know what it is.