Hi Tom,
Glad you enjoyed a bit of Singapore birding, it certainly provides
surprisingly good birding for a city state. You might find the
Singapore Nature Society's Bird Groups web site useful for planning
other stays. It can be found at http://www.nss.org.sg/wildbirdsingapore/
Cheers,
Carl Clifford
On 11/07/2011, at 10:35 PM, Tom and Mandy Wilson wrote:
Hi all
intriguing...like Nikolas Haass I too have just been in Singapore, but
for work, so I perhaps had even less time than Nikolas had (current
sunrise/sunset time is 7:15am/715pm or thereabouts, and with not much
dawn/dusk twilight in the tropics, there wasn't much birdable time
between usable daylight and starting work, and a bit at the end of the
day). Monday morning I managed about 20 minutes in Fort Canning Park
(the largest observable green space close to my hotel) but I didn't
see a great deal apart from Mynas, House Crows, Magpie Robins and
several very elusive sunbirds. Luckily, on Friday I came back early
from an offsite, so was able to have between 5 and 7:45pm in the
Botanic Gardens, which provided some good sightings, including:
Laced Woodpecker (pair near the Swan lake)
Large tailed Nightjar (calling near the visitor centre)
White Breasted waterhen with chicks (near the Swan lake and eco lake)
Red Legged Crake (at the lower end of the rainforest path)
Pink Necked Green Pigeon (hordes - all over the place)
Common Iora (several sites)
Oriental White Eye (ditto)
Golden Bellied Gerygone (near visitor centre)
Black Naped Oriole (ditto)
Common Tailorbird (several spots)
Rufous tailed Tailorbird (near the eco pond)
Striped Tit Babbler (in rainforest area near fork in path)
Lots of swiftlets...how does one tell them apart????
Loads of squirrels - very distracting when they were rummaging around
in the rainforest undergrowth.
The midweek offsite itself was a different story from a birding
perspective - 9am starts allowed an hour or so before breakfast on two
mornings to explore the locality around the Pulai Beach Resort in
Desaru, Malaysia (almost due east from Singapore on the coast - about
2 hours drive away), comprising the resort grounds and some forested
areas across and along the access road. There were many fruiting
trees in the area, so a good selection of pigeons, plus flowering
plants attracting several sunbird species too. Highlights here were:
Oriental Pied Hornbill (great to see, especially as I could hear but
not find them on morning #1)
Green Imperial Pigeon
Orange Breasted Green Pigeon
Pink Necked Green Pigeon
Cinnamon Headed Green Pigeon (only a possible fly-by)
Little Green Pigeon (tiny!)
Peaceful Dove (a familiar but subtly different call)
Grey Headed Woodpecker
Rufous Woodpecker
White Breasted Kingfisher
Collared Kingfisher
Chestnut Breasted Malkoha
Plaintive Cuckoo
Long Tailed Parakeet
Blue Throated Bee Eater
White Rumped Shama (a female - took me a while to suss that one out
until she flew away from me)
Purple Throated Sunbird (an absolute stunner when seen in full sunlight)
Copper Throated Sunbird
Common Tailorbird
Black Headed Munia
Black Drongo
Orange Bellied Flowerpecker
Scarlet Backed Flowerpecker
Some of the resort's sparrow flock was very odd looking - couldn't
work out if they were very pale Trees or Plain Backed Sparrows.
In transit I also spotted a Black Shouldered Kite, Great Billed Heron
and a Javan Cuckoo Shrike, amongst many more swiftlets and White
Bellied Sea eagles. No other raptors though, which was disappointing.
I had no local advice, but do have a copy of Birds of Singapore (Hails/
Jarvis) from my 1993 visit and Where to Watch Birds in Asia (Wheatley)
as well as a copy of Robson's Birds of South East Asia. As I now work
for a Singapore based group, there are likely to be a few more trips
in the future too, so keen to get to where Nikolas went next time...
Cheers
Tom Wilson
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