Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Birds at Singapore Botanic Garden

This is the continuation from my last post on Singapore Botanic Garden. Other than the beautiful duck that I have posted earlier, there are many interesting sighting in the garden too.Up on a very tall tree, I saw a pair of Common Myna (Acridotheres tristis) building their love nest converted from a hole on the tree. I tried from different angle, but didn’t able to see if there is any chicks in the nest. Perhaps got to come back again and check it out.The birds in & out of the nest taking turns quite often.Managed to get a shot showing the changing shift in progress.Looks like is feeding the chicks but I don't have a visual.On another branch slightly higher than the Myna nest, I saw another nest that looks like a House Crow‘s nest.I saw a big bird sneakily move to the nest direction.On a closer look, it was a female Asian Koel (Eudynamys scolopacea). Asian Koel are known to be brood parasite. This Asian Koel must be trying to lay eggs in the nest and expect the host to incubate and feed their chick until they fledged.Across the field on the palm tree opposite, I saw big flock of Asian Glossy Starling (Aplonis panayensis) perch on the palm leaves. There are at least few hundreds of them with more than half of them are juveniles.Young Starling has a very different plumage from the adult starling. They are not black as seen on the normal adult starling but appear to be scaly. The big numbers of off-spring show that the food supplies in the garden must be good. An adult Asian glossy starling snatch a piece of bread left behind by a tourist and later found it sharing with another juvenile Starling.
I’m not sure if it is feeding the juvenile or the juvenile actually try to intercept the food from another adult starling.
I saw a dark shadow slightly bigger than a carpenter bee flew pass me over to the palm tree on the opposite. Oh it was a fledgling yellow-vented burbul (Pycnonotus goiavier).
Looks like is now the peak of the breeding season for birds in the SBG.

No comments:

Post a Comment