Singapore Birding: Trip report Part 1
November 2018
After having a relatively quiet birding year (shocking I know), I have been making up for it in a big way with a recent trip to Singapore, for more-or-less, a several years of pristine southeast Asian birding! I was principally in Singapore for work, helping a local artist produce and record their debut album, as well as playing a number of gigs, but thankfully most of my daytimes were free to follow the birds. And follow them, I did!
I departed Melbourne on late on Thursday (technically early on Friday morning) at 1.05am, touching down at Changi Airport at around 5.40am. Don't be fooled, it's actually a 7hr+ flight, but thanks to timezones I was doing alright. For someone who hadn't sleep since Wednesday night, I was feeling spectacular! It had been almost 14 years since I had last been in Asia, and I certainly wasn't a birder when I was 12 years old, so basically everything (of the avian variety) was going to be new and very exciting!
I organised for an early check in at my hotel and to my great surprise, I was upgraded to one of the luxury suites (yeeeeeeesssss!). The best part? There was a pair of Asian Koel calling from the hotel garden! With the accomodation out of the way, I unpacked my binoculars, assembled my camera and went and jumped on the East West Line and heading east towards Pasir Ris MRT station.
I departed Melbourne on late on Thursday (technically early on Friday morning) at 1.05am, touching down at Changi Airport at around 5.40am. Don't be fooled, it's actually a 7hr+ flight, but thanks to timezones I was doing alright. For someone who hadn't sleep since Wednesday night, I was feeling spectacular! It had been almost 14 years since I had last been in Asia, and I certainly wasn't a birder when I was 12 years old, so basically everything (of the avian variety) was going to be new and very exciting!
I organised for an early check in at my hotel and to my great surprise, I was upgraded to one of the luxury suites (yeeeeeeesssss!). The best part? There was a pair of Asian Koel calling from the hotel garden! With the accomodation out of the way, I unpacked my binoculars, assembled my camera and went and jumped on the East West Line and heading east towards Pasir Ris MRT station.
Asian Koel
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Hotel Gardens
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Within 30 minutes I arrived at the fabled Pasir Ris Park, one of Singapore's most renowned birding locations. As mentioned on National Parks website, besides being a popular recreational park for both tourists and locals, it's main attraction for birders is a beautifully preserved six-nectar mangrove forest, a three-storey bird watching tower and several ponds and adjacent jungle.
Unfortunately my time was limited as I had to be in the studio by late afternoon, so the pressure was on to track down one of my target species, which as you can probably guess, was a species of owl, the Sunda Scops Owl to be precise. In Australia, our smallest owl is the Morepork, and we certainly don't have any naturally occurring members of the Otus genus (scops owl). The Sunda Scops Owl is a whole 5-10cm smaller again than the Morepork and weighs only 100-150 grams! It is found right across the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra and Java and for long time, was considered a subspecies of the Indian Scops Owl (Otus bakkamoena), though papers published in 1999 have firmly suggested it as a full species in its own right (accepted by IOC, König, etc - Clements finally accepting the split 8 years later).
Prior to my travels I had joined Singapore Birders and Bird Sightings, the main two Facebook groups for birders, bird photographers (more on that in another trip report), and twitchers of the region. These proved to be extremely valuable, and the local birding community were incredible generous with providing gen on species and sites. I highly recommend joining this pages before travelling to Singapore and/or Malaysia. It was through this page that I was given the information on where a pair of roosting Sunda Scops Owl could be tracked down. Particularly I'd like to thank Yu Xun Tee and Fabius Tan who gave me the co-ordinates and then instructions as to example which clump of trees (there were several and they were all identical) exactly to spot the owl in.
Finally after around an hour of searching (which was quite literally the proverbial needle in a haystack), I spotted a tiny little owl, that was almost russet, reddish brown in colour. It had dark eyes and gorgeous little speckling of black across its plumage. Yes! Sunda Scops Owl! Additionally, after finding the first bird, the second one was tracked down in the adjacent brush. Anyone after information on finding this species should send me an email at bigdipbirding@gmail.com
Sunda Scops Owl
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Day roost hidden deep within the thickets!
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With the Scops Owl in the bag, I felt I could relax and finally enjoy the other amazing birds and creatures that were across Pasir Ris Park. I had already scored a number of lifers including Pink-necked Pigeon, Blue-tailed Bee-eater, Yellow-vented Bulbul, Common Tailorbird (common around the scops owl pond) and Asian Glossy Starling. Further more, there were great big Malayan Water Monitor everywhere! They really were huge and so abundant! Some adults reaching up to 1.5-2metres (4.9-6.6 ft) in length! Now that's a lizard!
Following our owl conversations, Yu Xun was kind enough to come down and meet me at the park for some more birding. Our next target was the Spotted Wood Owl, one of Asia's largest owl species. Apparently there was a reliable pair of adults and their juvenile located in garden around carpark C, so that's where we met. One of the interesting species I finally got a good look at on the way out was a very handsome male Red Junglefowl. It was pretty obvious to me that a legitimate Red Junglefowl is much more than your average domestic chook. They are a beautiful combination of rich deep reds, yellows, golds, and glossy green, with brilliant white ear-wattle, red comb and an obvious white patch on the rump. It was quite nice to enjoy this species in a natural context, however, it has further fuelled my thoughts of the 'Red Junglefowl' that are ticked on Christmas Island in Australia to be completely illegitimate. Thoughts?
Malayan Water Monitor
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Red Junglefowl
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Soon I found Yu Xun and we were off to search for the Spotted Wood Owl. I was given pre-warning that these birds use a large area and don't always favour the same tree, or even clump of trees. This was particularly as the poor roosting owls are often disturbed and flushed by Oriental Pied-Hornbill that flap about noisily creating chaos. On our way through the trees we spotted several Collared Kingfisher and a stunning White-throated Kingfisher, a species I had been really keen on seeing. As we searched through the gardens we spotted many Arctic Warbler, Asian Brown Flycatcher and several Javan Myna, all new birds for my life list.
It soon became clear that we were not going to connect with the Spotted Wood Owl this late in the day, but I was ok with this. Why? Because we had bumped into a whole flock of Oriental Pied-Hornbill! Seeing this bird, (and this family) for the first time, was practically breathtaking. We don't have anything that even comes close to Hornbills in Australia, and seeing this species was literally like seeing a picture jumping out of a book! They were huge with gorgeous pied plumage and monstrous 19cm bills! Shockingly, I later found out that this particularly species is notably one of the smallest hornbills in all of Asia! That right there is reason number one why I need to go back!
White-throated Kingfisher
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Oriental Pied-Hornbill
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Conceding defeat on the Spotted Wood Owl (but for the right Oriental Pied-Hornbill type reasons), Yu Xun and I headed back to the first area of the park where I had seen the Sunda Scops Owl. Along the way we saw a Brown Shrike, a House Crow, a White-breasted Waterhen and a watched a pair of Psittacula rocket overhead that were too fast to ID.
Our final stop was to search along the mangroves, where we turned up several Grey Heron, Little Egret, Eastern Cattle Egret and a few more Collared Kingfisher. It was early afternoon, and as if on cue, Singapore had decided to have a tropical thunderstorm, so we decided to call it quits. On our way out Yu Xun told me that he was actually about to fly off to India that very night to embark on a wildlife expedition for the next week! Sounded pretty exciting, might add that one to the bucket list.
Brown Shrike
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Grey Heron
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With day one done and dusted, I was pretty excited to get back into the thick of it all again. Singapore and I were going to get along just fine! Next up, I'd be visiting Gardens By The Bay and Satay By The Bay, but we'll save that for the next trip report!
PS. Don't forget to leave a comment below! What do you think of Singapore?
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James Mustafa is a birder, wildlife enthusiast and self-confessed twitcher from Melbourne, Australia. A musician and composer by trade, he has been birding, exploring nature and appreciate wildlife for all his life. Since taking up a real fascination with birds, he has soared with tropicbirds in the Indian Ocean, played with hummingbirds in North America, chased owls in Asia, and twitched everything from gulls to leaf warblers across Australia.
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