Using their front flippers and their tail, they hop around the mud in the mangroves at low tide, chasing one another. Imagine that. A fish that can walk on land!
Another animal I spotted is the Eurasian curlew (Numenius arquata). These wading birds are pretty plain to look at: speckled brown feathers; about the size of a duck. They do have distinctive long, curved beaks. These let them burrow deep into coastal mud to find small animals to eat. What is amazing about the Eurasian curlew is the distance they travel every year. They spend spring and summer in Europe and Russia (even Siberia!). Every winter though, they cross oceans to come to the southern end of Sulawesi.
I felt calm, because I was trying to stay quiet and observant in a rather monotone brown environment, yet I also felt surprised by all the new animals I saw climbing out of the muddy holes so close to town.
These crabs, mudskippers and birds can all be found within minutes of the city, on the boardwalk extending from the main road to the mudflats and planted mangrove forest of Kendari City Bay.
The mangrove trees create ideal hunting grounds for many animals, including the mudskippers and Eurasian curlew.
Mangroves once covered most of the world’s tropical coastline. "Seacology" is a Berkeley-based non-profit that looks at island ecology all over the world. They report that earth has lost half its mangrove forest within the last half century.
