Beaker and better

The Annotated Budak: Beaker and better by @budak

Halfbeaks are among the most commonly seen fishes in the mangroves. Tidal creeks and larger rivers often swarm with untidy schools of these surface dwellers , which tend to gather around anchorages such as bridges and trees, perhaps to elude open water predators or because that is where the feeding is best. A few, smaller species, such as this strikingly marked resident of Pulau Subar Darat, can also be found on intertidal reef flats, typically in the company of nervous silversides, where they haunt the topmost reaches of the water column and snap up floating particles of vegetation or zooplankton. Having stiff, slender bodies with largely plain colours, hemiramphids would probably draw little attention from lay ichthyophiles were it not for their bizarre mouthparts. The upper mandible tapers as one might expect in a fish of such slim proportions, but the lower half protru...

Full article: http://budak.blogs.com/the_annotated_budak/2011/10/beaker...