Monday, July 20, 2009

A Morning At The Singapore Botanic Gardens

Went to SBG in the hopes of seeing my old friend the Stork-billed Kingfisher. Instead, I met a photographer whom I had met last year while watching the Stork-billed fish at Symphony Lake. It was from him that I caught up with the SBG birdie updates. He had sad news the Stork-billed is gone and this year there wasn't any fluttering of little wings. He thinks that the nesting had failed and the Stork-billed Kingfishers left.
Can't blame the birds as the lake isn't what it use to, the water level has dropped so much that the birds can no longer dive for fish in their favorite locations.
The photog also told me that there was a sunbird nest that was in a perfect location for photographers and that they were looking forward to seeing little sunbirds peek out of the nest. However, the nest and its contents got stolen (unthinkable but yes us humans can be downright bad for animal kind). He then pointed out a Pink-necked Dove with her brood of two. He says she's already brought up two babies and this is her second nesting. I had to take a family portrait of these birds.I then mosied along to the heliconia garden to look for sunbirds, and I managed to catch this juvenile Crimson Sundbird.At the Ginger Garden, spotted my friend with a pair of Magpie Robins. He tells me a breeding pair and proceeded to feed the birds. This here is the female and below is the male. These are also my best shots of the Magpie Robins, which I nicked named crazy birds . The pair that used to live in my housing estate would not stay still for me. They are sadly gone too and no longer wake us up with their happy song every morning.We headed to Swan Lake to see if the Stork-billed was there as we got there we met another photographer who said the bird isn't there too. All that I found was a Bull Frog, someone released this into the lake.

2 comments:

Shawn said...

Awww... That first picture in here looks so sweet!

Shirls said...

thanks shawn. it was one of the whimsical shots.