StarShower Vol.V "Wooden Planks"

our morning trips to the mangrove had been mostly settled, so we went for observation processes on thr fourth day. our job was to make a smaller quad (about 1m square) to take note of the behavior and reactions of Fiddler crabs. these crabs are extremely tiny and the males have one oversized, brightly-coloured pincer instead of two balanced ones. apparently they are quite useless in doing anything other than waving. yes, these crabs wave. it is a form of attracting the females to their burrows. if one keeps really quiet, you can actually see them waving non-stop in various directions, and the corresponding reaction of the females. it was quite interesting, i managed to get wonderful snapshots of them while waiting under a tree branch for almost 20 minutes without moving.

a while later i noticed a bird that had come really close to where the crabs lived and it started hopping about near the sand. the crabs fled for their lives and i assumed that this grey-coloured bird was probably the crabs' predators. however nothing else confirmed that as the bird went for the red ants on the trees instead. later on mr. balaji predicted the bird as a tern, which didn't mean much. i had to keep my hands steady for the shot as the bird kept hopping from branch to branch, but didn't make much use of its wings.

the afternoon sun was scorchingly-hot that my skin started peeling. it was quite painful, the effects of sunburn. our next activity was boom-netting, which i initially had absolutely no idea what it was. i heard quite a few scary and interesting predictions of what it was.

--"you get into a net and the boat pulls you and you catch fish at the same time!"

--"boom-netting is just like wakeboarding, except that this time YOU are the wakeboard!"

to be honest i was quite freaked out but when we finally got down to task it was one of the most fun highlights of the trip. well, after all we DID have to hang onto a net and the boat DID pull us, but we didn't have to catch anything or otherwise. it was just for the fun of it, quite a leisure activity. i went for a few rounds.

night was supposedly reserved for trekking but it started pouring yet again, so trekking was postponed to the next day. we spent a bit of tme on the briefing for the project reports and continued with the discussion of whatever we saw/observed that day and the day before.