Weyers Wildlife Wonders will be a blog series curated by Ms. Jessica Weyer as part of her individual professional development plan. 

My in-country learning goal is to observe the wildlife of Malaysia and keep a journal of my observations. My goal is to create a journal that my students would be able to read and then create a journal of their own. During my time in Malaysia, I will make at least 10 posts about the wildlife that I have observed. When talking about wildlife definition of wildlife includes the flora and fauna of an area. I will talk about reptiles, birds, mammals and maybe even some plants.

Whenever I travel to a new part of the world I find it fascinating to study the differences in the ecosystems compared to where I am from. I live in the eastern part of Pennsylvania.

The first observation that I made when I arrived in Malaysia was the increased humidity. On the day I left Pennsylvania the humidity was 40% and I thought that it was particularly humid that day. The day I arrived in Malaysia the humidity was 70%. Everything feels wet all the time!

When we arrived and slept off some of the travel fog, I spotted my first bird. I was so excited to take a picture of this new, exciting, rare species. Sorry for the poor picture quality. This was neat because I traveled halfway across the world and the first bird I see is a crow!

My next sighting was not so common in the US. That evening we went on a bike ride and I heard someone say they thought they saw a monkey. I was so excited and walked up to it to get a better picture. My Malaysian friends told me to back up. Apparently, monkeys do not like a bunch of humans rushing up to them with cameras.

It was so neat to see the monkey walking on two feet carrying a coconut! On our way back home, while it was getting dark, we saw a troop (group) of monkeys in a tree. There had to be at least 20 of them in the tree. Unfortunately, I could not get a good picture. When I got back to my room I pulled out my field guide to ID the monkeys.

I believe that we spotted the long-tailed macaque. We later were told that these monkeys can enter your house to take food from you. They can even snatch food from your hands!! I may have just spotted the Malaysian form of a raccoon or maybe even a seagull. I can not wait to have more monkey encounters on this trip.

Tomorrow we are going to a more rural area to a school, so I will be on the lookout for more wildlife!

Jessica Weyer (@JessWeyer) is a secondary agriscience teacher from Pennsylvania.