Sarawak: A Last Stroll at Sama Jaya

After nearly five months in Singapore and Malaysia, with our grandson Royce about to enter a long period of hospital isolation in which we could have no part, it was time to go home.  I knew, as I prepared to leave Kuching and take Royce's brother Ryan back to Singapore en route to Canada, that it would be many months before we could return.  Royce's next journey, too, would be to Canada, for a long bout of treatment at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children.   On that last day - November 19, 2004 - I made time for a valetudinal stroll at Sama Jaya Park in Kuching.

Sama Jaya, unusually for an in-city park, holds a remnant patch of peat swamp forest.  The paved trails running through it are much used by joggers, but a slow walk can turn up (as I have often shown in past posts) quite a bit.  For one thing, some of the trees are labelled, which is very helpful for us non-botanists.  This one, Macaranga gigantea, is an edge and light-gap colonizer that is one of the first trees to re-occupy degraded areas. Finding it in an urban park should be no surprise.

Parishia maingayi, known as Upi Paya in Sarawak, is an altogether more spectacular tree.  besides iits impressive spreading buttress roots, it can grow to over 50 metres in height.

I don't see snakes very often in Same Jaya, and when I do they are usually pretty quick to make themselves scarce.  I was only able to get a snap of this Bronzeback (probably Dendrelaphis caudolineatus) as it disappeared into the undergrowth.

I believe that this dragonfly is a teneral, or newly-emerged, Agrionoptera insignis.  Like others of this forest-haunting species I have seen here, this one was perching quietly about a metre off the ground on a thin twig beside the trail.

I usually see the Giant Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa latipes), the largest bee in the world, in more open areas.  These bees are remarkably cooperative photographic subjects, and reportedly their sting "is a lot less painful than one would expect".  I try to be careful with them, though.

The Oakblues (Arhopala) are members of a vast genus of extremely similar butterflies, and without a complete key for Sarawak I am not even going to try to identify this one to species.  Oakblues are interesting insects, though.  A number of them have taken advantage of symbiotic relationships between stinging ants and Macaranga trees.  Their larvae contain chemicals in their skins that mimic chemicals in the plants, and as a result are accepted, and even protected, by the ants.

This lovely little butterfly was a new one for me - a farewell gift from a place I would not see again for many months. It is a Banded Royal (Rachana jalindra), surely one of the prettiest of the hairstreaks. 

Away from the forest remnants, the most interesting spot in Sama Jaya is the little artificial pond not far from the parking lot. 

Here, among the other water plants, were the delicate fringed blooms of Water Snowflake (Nymphoides indica). It is a member of a family of plants related not to water lilies (as you might expect) but to the very different-looking gentians, flowers I am more used to seeing on an alpine scree than floating in a pond. 

The pond attracts a surprising variety of dragonflies, including a few unusual ones. Today, though, the dragonflies were all garden-variety - though attractive - species, including this male Neurothemis terminata. 

As I have had cause to mention before, identifyoling Neurothemis dragonflies to species can be very tricky, and this is especially true for females and immature males - so I won't try with these. 

Here is another in my seemingly endless series of photos of Orthetrum sabina, probably the commonest dragonfly at Sama Jaya. 

And here is a male Rhodothemis rufa, perhaps not the commonest dragonfly at Sama Jaya but certainly the reddest. 

Finally, here is a last Malaysian dragonfly (at least for a while), and one of the handsomest and most distinctive of the lot: Rhyothemis phyllis.  It would be a year and a half or more before I was to see it again, so it makes a nice species to end on. For now it was time to go home and prepare for Royce’s arrival for the next stage of his treatment and a year in Canada with Grandma and Grandpa.