In PART 1 of this article, we described about our trip to Agumbe — how we reached Agumbe, about ARRS, about the tiniest frog we’ve ever seen, spotting green pit viper, and also about the numerous leech bites we experienced.
In this article, we will give you a virtual walkthrough about our trip inside the forest.
After breakfast, we started our trip into the Agumbe forest with all photography equipments in hand. We went walking inside the forest, because of which we spent good amount of time at every interesting thing we saw.
Pill Bug
Our first encounter was an interesting bug (picture below). Initially, we thought it was a Jewel Beetle. But, it wasn’t. It was a bug from the family of Armadillidiidae. There were at least 20-30 of them in a place. Look at its chrome-finish-like armour metal shiny body.
Front angle shot of the bug.
Amoghavarsha and Gowri Shankar (our trip experts) took this bug and placed in their palm. The bug slowly curled inward and it formed a perfect circle shape. The outer shell is very hard, it acts as a protection. After five minutes, it slowly relaxes its body and comes back to its original position.
Carpenter Ants
This photo is one of our favourite capture in Agumbe. We spotted a tree that looked slightly unusual. We went close to the tree and we saw hundreds of Carpenter Ants moving all around. These ants are huge in size, look at the size of its legs. Did you also notice the tiny drop of water at the ant’s backside?
Another shot of the carpenter ant.
Butterflies
During our walking trip, we spotted caterpillars in various stages and many variants of butterflies.
Grasshoppers
We spotted multiple variants of Grasshoppers.
Lantern Fly
We spotted multiple lantern flies. Below one is from the family of Fulgoridae.
Frogs
Loved its eyes.
Agumbe is an untouched beauty. You will see lot of trees, stones, water bodies — all at its natural best. Because of which, every encounter of an animal/reptile/insect is a surprise. Can you spot the frog in below picture? What a brilliant camouflage.
Snake
As we walked inside the forest, we spotted yet another snake. But, the cherry on the cake was — the species we spotted is the world’s smallest snake (called as Thread Snake). That’s Amogh’s palm.
Dragonfly
We spotted many species of Dragonflies too. Few are below.
Fast heart beat moments
We walked deep inside the forest region (with professionals like Amogh and Gowri guiding us).
Imagine a scene where you hear hear only the sound of tree movement, branches falling down infront of you, reptiles moving here and there, completely surrounded with tall and dense trees all around, walking on a land that’s fully covered with lots of leaves or thick grass. No one knew what all reptiles will fall on us from the trees or from the thick leaves below our foot.
For about 2 kilometers we were walking with both of our shoulders touching trees, the walking path is THAT narrow.
Finally, we saw a natural pond with green leaves beneath – the water was so pure. You must see it to believe it.
We had to cross this pond to proceed further. The water level in the pond was knee-high. We took every step inside the pond carefully.
After crossing the pond, in about 0.5 km, we saw a (100% clean) water stream.
We crossed the stream and walked inside the forest. The size of the trees simply blew our mind. I clicked this picture of Dhruv next to a tree. You can imagine the height of this tree.
After walking for another 0.5 km, we saw multiple waterfalls. Again, it was nature at its best.
A close up shot of moss. These are just about 0.5 to 1 cm in height.
While walking back towards ARRS, we spotted Malabar Giant Squirrel. It looks like a rabbit (in size).In a final part article, we talk about radio telemetry method to track king cobra, and also about our night time experience into forest.
