I have been observing the activities around the nest of a pair of Zebra Doves (Geopelia striata) for the last two week. Every evening at around 5pm, the bird in the nest flew out and its mate flew in to take over the incubation duty. The night shift bird would then sit on the eggs right up to the next morning without ever leaving the nest. At around daybreak there should be another shift change. But for the last two weeks I was not able to witness the morning shift change. I was wondering whether the birds were on 24 hours incubation duty.

Then this morning I had a pleasant surprise.

I wasn’t particularly keeping watch as in the past. At around 8 am when I was near the nest, the bird inside suddenly flew off. Within a few seconds its mate flew in. But instead of making itself comfortable in the nest, it picked up a piece of egg shell in its beak and immediately flew off. Three minutes later it flew in minus the shell and settled in the nest.

This is the day I have been waiting for - the hatching of one of the two eggs. The bird kept bending its neck downwards, making feeding movements. As with pigeons and doves, the Zebra Doves feed their chicks with crop milk.

I am still keeping watch to see when the other egg would hatch.

Last month a pair of Yellow-vented Bulbuls (Pycnonotus goiavier) built their nest among the branches of a Dracaena tree by my bedroom window. The convenience of the location led me to keep watch on the activities of the birds every day for the next few weeks. I set up my camera by the window. The curtains helped to shade me from being noticed by the birds. But the birds knew I was around. Every time I looked into the camera, the bird in the nest would face me, beak wide open.

It was an exciting period as I watched them incubating the egg (only one was laid) and looking after the chick.

During incubation, the birds did not sit in the nest continuously. Both parents visited the nest regularly. Each took turns to sit on the egg for about 10 to 15 minutes before flying off. This went on throughout the day. Only towards dusk would one of the birds stay in the nest, to remain there throughout the night. By dawn the duty bird left the nest but one or the other would return for short periods throughout the day. Unfortunately the sexes look alike so I could not distinguish between them.

One morning, 10 days after I spotted the nest, the egg hatched. The day-old blind chick was totally devoid of feathers. It remained flat on the bottom of the nest. There was no sign of the eggshell in the nest or on the ground around. The bird must have dumped it some distance away.

Throughout the day both parents flew in and out of the nest bringing food to feed the newly hatched chick. The chick responded to the parents’ presence by opening its beak wide. After the food was transferred to the chick, the parent bird settled down in the nest, to fly off after a short while. Every 10 to 15 minutes one or the other bird flew in to feed the hungry chick. By the third day the chick was fed solid food of various insects and invertebrates. If the piece of food were too big for the chick to swallow, the parent bird would pull it out of the chick’s throat and try breaking it into smaller pieces.

The parent birds were seen to constantly peck into the nest, probably removing bits and pieces of food not eaten by the chick. Or was it pecking at the ants in the nest? It was also possible that the bird were eating the excretion of the chick as, according to the literature, this contains undigested food.

One day, I was immediately below the nest when the parent bird noticed my presence. It suddenly took off and landed on the ground some distance away. It pretended to be hurt, flapping it wings to exaggerate its supposedly wounded condition. Naturally when I approached it, the bird moved further away, to subsequently fly off.

The birds were in shock that morning, flying in and looking puzzled. They took turns returning to the nest, looking around with their beaks wide open and even sitting in the nest for short periods before flying off. This they did for some time before the truth must have dawned on them that the chick was really gone and would not appear ever again. Then they finally left the scene.

It all started when a pair of Yellow-vented Bulbuls (Pycnonotus goiavier) built their nest among the branches of a tree in my garden. This is one of the commonest birds around urban Singapore and you don’t need to be a birdwatcher to recognise it. Eventually the eggs hatched and the parent birds began feeding the chicks. I was curious to find out the breeding details of this bulbul. Like, how many days does it takes for the eggs to hatch? Do both parent birds help in the incubation of the eggs? What do the parents feed the chicks with? How many days before the chicks leave the nest? These and many other questions raced through my mind. And they needed answers.

I have G.C. Maddoc’s “An Introduction to Malayan Birds” published in 1956. There are some ecological data but many of my questions could not be answered. The 1987 book, “Birds of Singapore” by Christopher Hails again carry limited ecological information. There are many guidebooks in the market but these are useless unless you wish to identify birds. The available books proved no help to me.

So I trawled the net once again. Even the net was not helpful. Of the 16,800 sites located by the search engine for Yellow-vented Bulbul, only two had any potential. The first was the web page set up in 2001 by Ria Tan, author of the Chek Jawa guide book. The second was that of the Nature Photographic Society (Singapore). This had images and ecological notes on hatching, chicks, etc., information that was current. The other 16,798 sites were of no help, containing trip reports where bulbuls were sighted or where images were given. Even the Oriental Bird Club’s site or that of the Nature Society (Singapore) did not help.

So what happened to the information gathered by the many birders operating from Singapore over the last two decades? Surely, much data on such a common bird would have been recorded.

Have these ever been published or even made available in web pages that I do not know of? Or are they stored in the memories of birders, to be eventually lost to ornithology? I am sure many others are equally hungry for information on the breeding behaviour of birds. Is it possible then for such information to be made available to the public at large? After all, knowledge not shared is knowledge lost.

My next experience was when a pair of Pink-necked Pigeons (Treron vernans) nested in my garden. Again I faced a blank wall. The literature as well as the net proved not helpful. Ria Tan’s page again gave some information, and she is not even a birder. There was also the page set up by the Sungei Buloh Nature Park. The information provided by these two pages, although current, was incomplete.

So what is a sometime-birder, who is not an ornithologist, to do?

I am now convinced that ecological information of our local birds is sketchy at best - because experienced birdwatchers are just looking at birds and not at their behaviour.

We cannot wait for ornithologists, the so-called biologically qualified people, to deliver the goods. After all how many ornithologists are there in Singapore? One? Two? And are there actually three? With biology moving from the traditional fields to the “life sciences” where emphasis is on the molecular aspects, ornithologists are becoming an endangered species here.

But then we have hundreds of birdwatchers, many very experienced. Should not these birdwatchers start collecting avian behavioural data at the same time? By all means bird watch, but please also behaviour watch. Take notes while out bird watching and share your information with others. If possible publish your findings so that others can share your experience.

The Bird Ecology Study Group was thus formed to encourage the study of bird behaviour. The group hopes to disseminate information on what bird behaviour is all about and how to conduct such studies. In the process we hope to encourage birders who are not satisfied to be just recreational birdwatchers, to become serious students of ornithology. In this way they can contribute substantially to the avian biology of Singapore.

The latest and most updated bird book for this area is David Wells’ “The Birds of the Thai-Malay Peninsula (Vol. I: Non-passerines)”. Open the pages and what do you find? Numerous entries like “No Information”, “No Data”, “Not Described”, “Non Reported” and “Not Recorded”.

Come on birdwatchers, do something about it!

Excuse me, are you an Ornithologist?
– Ramblings of a Wannabe Bird Watcher

I am a plant watcher. In fact I am more than a plant watcher. I study plants and I write about plants. A few years ago I became interested in birds. The change came when birds visited the trees that I studied. At first I ignored them. Then I shooed them away. Finally I watched them. And I have been watching them on and off ever since. Does this make me a birdwatcher? In a way it does, for I do just that – watch the birds. So I am now a birdwatcher.

Is a birdwatcher also a birder? Does a person who simply watches birds automatically become a birder? To get an answer to this question, I trawled the net. As expected, I found my answer there. The definition of a birder is someone who participates in the recreation of field identification of birds. What this means is that he or she needs to go out in the field, either in a group or alone, to watch and identify the birds that are around. According to this definition I am a sometime-birder. Why? Well, I do not join in any of the bird watching outings offered by the Nature Society. I only enjoy the birds in the comfort of my garden and try very hard to identify them from the many bird guidebooks available. Am I an armchair birder then?

Birders most often become twichers. These are the people who get “uncontrollable spasms of excitement” whenever they spot a new species of bird. They are willing to travel long distances just to see rare birds first spotted by someone else. And they keep a score of the birds they see in a checklist. Twitchers can turn into “powerbirders” when they join in bird races and tally up as many species as they can in the duration of the race. Once in a while, a powerbirder turns into a bad apple when he or she becomes obsessed with winning and in the process adds on questionable species on to the list just to be ahead of the others. Of course this is not a conscious move but because of the over-confidence of the birder in question and the desperate need to win, a few questionable species are added. In such a case the team mates may just go along with the dubious identification “in the spirit of the sport.”

Being a sometime-birder, I am definitely not a twitcher or a powerbirder. New species do not excite me and so far I have yet to join in any bird race.

Most twitchers report their sightings to an official recorder and these are subsequently published in the bird group’s bulletin. Such entries are seldom accompanied with detailed notes or photographs. Fellow twitchers accept these records without problems but not ornithologists. The latter always have problems with unauthenticated records. However, once published, these records tend to be readily quoted and re-quoted by birdwatchers throughout the world. This may end up perpetuating any earlier errors. So where do we go from here?

Photograph is one answer. Photography has not always been a part of the local bird watching activities. During the last decade or so this has changed. Many of the local articles on breeding behaviour published in the Nature Watch, Nature Society (Singapore)’s flagship magazine have been written by avid photographers like Ong Kiem Sian, Raymond Poon, Jimmy Chew and Graeme Guy, rather than by birders per se.

The advent of affordable digital cameras and the marriage of this contraception with the binoculars and telescope resulting in a digiscope opened the door to better bird photography. Digiscopers are more and more helping to authenticate bird sightings. In the local scene a group of birdwatchers has formed a discussion group in the net called “Pigeon-Holes” whereby members report observations of bird behaviour, etc supported by photographic evidence. This obviously leaves traditional twitchers out in the cold.

The advancement of better and higher resolution digital cameras has greatly improved the quality of bird photographers. Professional single lens reflex (SLR) cameras are now available with high speed shooting performance. Some of the cameras available in the market have the capacity to shoot continuously at a high burst rate of more than eight frames per second and technology is fast improving in this direction. Obviously the cost of these modern machines are rocketing sky-high, but camera retail outlets have come to the rescue of the average photographers. Monthly payment is now available. Such cameras are also offering better and better resolution images that will soon match the resolution of photographic slides, it not already so. What all these means is that photographers are able to capture action shots of birds with a single pressing of the shutter button.

Who is an ornithologist?
We now come to the definition of an ornithologist. A professional ornithologist is obviously one who has a degree in zoology and is working on birds full time. But who are the amateur ornithologist? Although I personally watch birds and even have published a few articles on the breeding behaviour of birds, I am definitely not an ornithologist, even an amateur one at that. My articles are published in Nature Watch. Unfortunately this is only a popular magazine, not a scientific journal. Also, there is no peer review of the contents. Should I strive to be an ornithologist, I need to publish in any one of the many ornithological journals. For example, my articles need to be accepted by Forktail, the scientific journal of the Oriental Bird Club. Alternatively, I need to publish in Bird Conservation International, the journal of BirdLife International. However, if I my articles are accepted for publication in either BirdingASIA or World Birdwatch, the popular magazines of the two birding organizations respectively, this does not make me an ornithologist.

Let me elaborate further. The first post-colonial checklist of birds of Singapore was published in 1984 by the NSS’s Bird Group under the Chairmanship of Clive Briffett. This has subsequently been updated. Publishing a checklist does not make one an ornithologist. But having an annotated checklist accepted for publication by the British Ornithological Union after careful peer review by fellow ornithologists, is another matter altogether. Publishing a bird guidebook with photographic illustrations only proves that the author is an accomplished bird photographer. Whether the author in question can be considered an ornithologist will have to depend on other factors.

But does an ornithologist need to have a degree? I do not think so. There are many western ornithologists, like those colonial birders who did not possess a degree in any of the biological disciplines. And there were some who did not even possess any degree at all. To qualify as an ornithologist, one needs to have a deeper understanding of birds, not just able to identify birds. The ability to identify all the birds species in Singapore, be they indigenous or exotic, does not necessarily make one an ornithologist.

The formation of the Bird Ecology Study Group, with myself as one of the founder members, may tempt me to claim to be an ornithologist. But I will have to try to resist this temptation. I should be happy to remain a simple botanist. However, I will continue to publish more popular articles on bird ecology in Nature Watch and Birding Asia, but this is only because I wish to share my observations with the local as well as foreign birders. After all, the former is distributed locally while the latter is more widely distributed throughout the region. In sharing observations, we add on to the common knowledge of our local avian fauna. My other motive is to encourage more members to publish their observations. After all, there are plenty of new behavioural traits of our birds that are begging to be noticed and reported. And I am sure anyone who spends time observing bird behaviour is sure to uncover something that has not been reported before.

Birders should not be satisfied in just knowing our birds in name only. They should strive to learn more about them. Let us not just bird watch but behaviour watch as well.