Muaya Conservation Area, Sabah- Are U ready to Hunt some INSECTS?

Yup!!! Another Field Work Again!! 

Don't worry if you feel bored with my Field work Post 

cause this is my last field work for this semester..

Past field trip worked on frog, small mammals and photography..

So, this time I went to Muaya Forest to work on Insects!

We are required to collect at least 10 orders of Insects specimen each person.

So, lets have a look of the tools that we need while collecting insect specimens.

What we need is a tool box containing a forcep ( to hold the specimen) , ruler  ( for measuring purposese) , pencil ( to take note), mounting stage (to set the suitable height of specimen and label on entomology pin, entomology pin or ento pin (to pin the specimen) and triangular paper ( to store specimens of butterfly and dragonflies).

It took about 4 hours to reach Muaya Research center with 3 and half an hour of travelling in bus and half hour in 4 wheels vehicles.

During our travel, we stop by Sipitang town for lunch.

It is a beatifull small town located just beside the sea~

You can have great ocean view all the way down the town~

Nice ocean view from the place where we had our lunch~

Where is it?

It was actually KFC!!!

That's right!!! You can have a great ocean view lunch when you eat in Sipitang KFC!!

Spotted this Sign board at the road side..

Seems familiar right?

Try substitute the "Buy" word with "Fly"~ xp
So lets have a look the facilities here~

Muaya camp base is the most comfortable camp site I stayed before.

Camps were set inside a open hall with bathroom~
Everything was so clean~~~
They even provide span and pillow for us to sleep!!!

This is the out side of camping side~

Thick fog that day after rain~
reminded me the movie "THE FOG"...
It was so cold here during the night and morning...
Feel like living in a refrigerator..
I'm so scare to take bath in Muaya...
The water feels like the freezing sea water In TITANIC!!
Seriously, feels like the blood not pumping up my brain while I wash my hair..

There are a pool of forest water just outside of camp side for us to swim and bath there~

The water was so cool and peaceful~
Of course the first thing I did when I reach Muaya was to play in the pool~

Reading a interesting book while immersing your leg inside the cool water was so enjoyable~

So, what I do in Muaya?

Well, off course  catching bugs!!

I learn to set traps to catch insects as not all the insects that you can catch manually.

This is butterfly traps to trap butterfly~

It is not easy to catch big butterfly as they fly very fast.

so, we will use fruits with strong sweet smell such as pineapple to attract them.

Butterfly can fly in but hard to fly out as they will fly up first then only fly forward.

This is pitfall trap.

This is usually used to traps ants or insects that crawl on the ground.

We will use tuna, meat or sweet as bait to attract the insects.

The insects will fall into the cup that we buried same level as the ground, containing soap water.

Soap water is slippery so that they can hardly crawl up again.

This is the pitfall trap I set up~

A leaf is used as camouflage. 

To catch the insects or to set up the trap, we need to walk through the forest trail.

It was quite slippery for my Adidas Kampung..

But it was so much easier than the trail In Imbak~

Along the trail there are many small water fall and river~

At the end of the trail it will be the tall and great waterfall of Muaya~

Looking the Waterfall from below was not enough for us..

So we challenged to climb up to the top of the water fall.

The way going up was not easy at all!!!

The land was so slippery and slope...

It was so dangerous as the trail was so narrow and it was slope next to the trail..

If you do not pay attention, you might slipped and fall down the hill...

We need to climb up there with the aid of ropes.

REALLY SUPER HARD climbing up there with my short legs!!!

Even there are few times that I felt that I might fall down the slope and die there...

But when I reach the top, I felt that all the hardship was worthy..

The View was just "WAO!!!!"

There was a small water fall before the Great water fall~

The view on top of the water fall~

It was SUPER HIGH!!!

Help me!!!!

Nice Mountain view pack lunch~

Here are some picture I snap during my field work~

We at 0km away from the water fall~

Means we reach the destination!!

What is this????

Opps~ mating milipedes~

Fungus~

White mushroom growing on a rotting tree barks~

After 4 days in Muaya, its time to go home~

Crazy shots with coursemates

This is my Insects collection

P/s: does not include my butterflies specimens yet.

We mount our insects until late night during the field work.

P/s: mount means set the specimen in position.

This is the out come of late night mounting and freezing temperature in Muaya.

I'm officially sick...

But no worries~

I'm recovering now~

Still have lots of assignments and presentation awaits.

And I'm working on my Japanese course drama now~

Language is always my weakness...

Hope every thing goes well..

And I will be the Emcee for My course Biopem night~

It is actually a last minutes offer but I really Feel excited bout it until I haven't sleep yet even it was late night now!

Good Luck to me!!!