After last night’s series of attacks by the Asian Koels (Eudynamys scolopacea) (see 2; also 1), I went downstairs this morning to survey the grounds below the tree well before the sweepers arrived. There were egg shells lying around, bluish shells with dark speckles, probably those of the crow’s.

The light cream shell with faint brown specks, seen on the lower portion of the image, was picked up yesterday around noon. I wonder whose egg was this? Could it belonged to the koel that made the dramatic attacks, missing the nest when she dropped an egg?

This morning there was always one House Crows (Corvus splendens) staying put in the nest all the time. It sat with its beak apart, shifting her position several times. It must be tedious sitting there under the hot sun! As far as I can ascertain, it only took a short break of about four seconds, leaving the nest and remaining just outside the nest, stretching itself.

At 1.00 pm its mate flew in to check on the situation, flying off almost immediately after. But a minute later it returned with some food (cannot see what it was) that it inserted into the nesting bird’s mouth. Wow! I presume that was the male bringing food to the incubating female.

Quick as a wink the arriving bird took off again, to return twice. I am not able to say whether there were any exchange of food as my view was blocked by the large nest.

I was out till late tonight, and it was raining. Was there another assault?

Now at 10.10 pm, sitting at my computer, suddenly a crow cawed twice. I looked out just in time to see the foliage ruffled and a koel crying ‘kweek kweek’ as it fluttered downwards out of sight. Two minutes later a koel in the tree called ‘kweek kweek…’. Was the Koel still in the tree? Did it drop in another egg? At 10.20 pm crow cawed again, but I did not notice any disturbance around.

The koels here seem to strike at night.

Contributed by Angie Ng, 27th December 2005; image also by Angie.

In the 1990s I was a frequent visitor to Pulau Ubin, cycling around the island almost every weekend. There I had my first glimpse of the Red Jungle Fowl (Gallus gallus). Back then I had thought nothing more of it than a mere chicken that looked ‘more kampung’ than those kampung chicken our Malay neighbours kept.

It was not until 1997 when I was there on an outward bound course that I saw a cock roosting on a tree that was about 30m high. I was wondering how the hell did it get up there, especially with all that fancy feathers that would surely ground a domestic chicken.

As if to prove a point, a few days later at a disused quarry, I saw a cock fly across the entire breadth of the lake. As it reached the other end, it actually demonstrated a graceful climb and ended up on top of a tree.

I initially mistook it for a crow that was trailing a snake it caught and having problems climbing higher and crossing the lake. But on closer observation, the chicken shape was obvious. And of course, to round it all off, the cock crowed, more than three times from its perch on the tree top.

My next encounter with the jungle fowl was in 2002. This time it was just outside my bedroom in my Loyang Valley Condo in Changi. My window overlooked Selarang camp. The old camp area in the 1980s had large patches of lallang, and lots of old trees and some dead trees as well. When the new camp was constructed, most of the birds that were there before were gone. Only recently I did I see Hill Mynas (Gracula religiosa) and parrots making a comeback.

On the fringe of the new camp, there are grassy slopes where people seldom wander. These slopes are on the boundary between the condo and the camp. I was woken up one morning by the loud crowing of a chicken. I immediately assumed it was one of the males from the kampung chicken that were kept by the people staying at the prison warden’s quarters next to the camp.

This cock was definitely not lost. I was back there again the same time the next day. From the sound of its crow, I thought it must be quite a specimen to behold. So I sneaked out to have a look. And there it was majestically patrolling the no man’s land between the camp and the condo. Again it first struck me as ‘more kampung’ than the average kampung chicken. I also did not discount the fact that it might be a ‘fighting cock’ that someone had let loose. But then it occurred to me that it might be a red jungle fowl. One of the last few that managed to survive the rapid destruction of habitat in the Changi industrial area.

So I went back to the books. The white patch on the cheek was unmistakable. But I was no jungle fowl expert. The bird disappeared for a week and then was back again at the same spot. One evening I decided to try and get real close to it by hiding below its line of sight and creeping ahead of it. And hopefully pop my head up as it strode by.

I got more than I bargained for. As I popped up my head and walked to the fence, I startled the hen and a brood of chicks. The hen made hell of a raucous and surprised me by flying vertically up 7m or more to a high branch on a tree. The cock flew straight out to the open, and made a circling climb to the top of a tree further away. The chicks really surprised me. They were no more than the size of tennis balls and they shot up to a height of about 50cm to a metre before dashing for cover. All this while the hen was making hell of a scene distracting my attention. While the chicks stayed frozen away from view.

I only managed to see the family twice more before they moved on to another part of the camp. As for myself I was too busy learning to fly and so could not investigate the surprise appearance of this family of fowl that I suspected could be the red jungle fowl (or someone’s pet fighting cock).

Contributed by Jeremy Lee, images by Jacqueline Lau and Timothy Pwee; additional comments below by bird specialist R Subaraj.

Interesting account of the Red Junglefowl from Jeremy and a good record of breeding of the species on the main island of Singapore, at Loyang. This bird is believed to have colonised Pulau Ubin by flying across the Straits of Johor. And there have been a couple of villagers who actually observed them doing just that. Ubin proved an ideal habitat for these birds. As the human population on the island shrank and poaching declined, these birds have multiplied successfully and today it is found throughout the island and even on the satellite isle of Ketam.

On Tekong, it has surprisingly not been successful and apart from a couple of records, the species is absent. Habitat may be the reason though it is still a mystery.

In the early 1990s, there was a report of a flock of junglefowl at Selarang Camp in Changi and the species continues to try and colonise the main island from Ubin. I have personally recorded the species from the Loyang Camp at Cranwell Road, Changi Coastal Road and Naval Base Road at Tanah Merah.

Another recent colonisation seems to be happening on the western side of Singapore with records east to Ama Keng.

According to Laurence Kilham’s “On watching Birds” he says “almost nothing was known of life of American Crow in spite of its being among the commonest of birds.” More so in Singapore, the House Crow (Corvus splendens) is considered to be a pest and a threat to all native birds. It is regarded as public enemy number one and bounty hunters are paid according to the number of birds they shoot.

I usually would walk past a yellow flame tree (Peltophorum pterocarpum) at the corner of a car park as I entered the back of my clinic. It was on March 9, 2005 that I first noticed the presence of a nest in the canopy of the tree. How long it took to build the nest I am not sure, but it must have been quite fast, as I did not notice it before. The nest was seated on the forks of a tree branch and shaped like a bowl surrounded by twigs arranged in a circular fashion about 10 meters from the ground. My observations were made from the ground and from the landings of an adjacent Housing and Development Block. As I was not able to look into the hollow of the nest, I could not tell when the eggs were laid or when they were hatched.

It was on March 31, 22 days after I noticed the nest that I saw signs of life in the nest. Every morning at about 8.30 am when I arrived at the clinic, I would notice the pair of parents at the nest. Sometimes one of the birds would be seated in the nest. I had no idea how many eggs were laid until later when the chicks popped their heads out of the nest for me to count them.

At night I was unable to observe which parent bird sat on the nest. What I saw was a bird perched above and near to the nest. When I shone my torch the bird would fly away.

The field guides do not differentiate male and female crows but I was able to tell the sexes apart in that the female had a distinct whitish marking around the neck and was slimmer, whereas the male had a greyish neck and visibly strong neck muscles and stouter. It was the female that spent more time around the nest.

There were in all 3 chicks. The first fledged on 11 April, the second on 14 and the third on 18. On April 26 the chicks were able to fly away from the nest and disappeared for a while.

The chicks had won their ‘wings’ by flying to adjacent trees in the car park. One interesting observation was that when the chicks were about to fledge, a flock of crows came from nowhere and cawed loudly, shouting encouragement to the chicks in the nest. This occurred as each chick took its turn to fledge. That was my first encounter with cooperative rearing of the young. I did not see any crows other than the parents feeding the young in the nest. Lawrence Kilham says in his observations of the American Crow, ”The helpers, sometimes up to six or seven of them aided in all phases of nesting, from nest building to feeding the incubating female, and, after hatching, feeding the young before and after they fledged.”

The incubation period was approximately 22 days from March 9 to 21and it took 27days from March 22 to April 18 for all the chicks to fledge.

On and off for some weeks after, the fledglings would come back to their familiar surroundings on the yellow flame tree. On one occasion I witnessed the same female parent bird with its prominent whitish neck instructing a chick with a morsel of food on the floor, a personal coaching lesson, no doubt.

Three months later, on July 13, a nest appeared suddenly in the same yellow flame tree. On July 21 a pair of crows was seen going in and out of the nest each morning. I presume these were the young crows that had matured and were nesting. Then I looked at the opposite bigger tree near the rubbish depot and found another nest in the canopy. A few days later as I walked to the front of the clinic I spotted another nest in the canopy of another tree. This was the third nest and the pair of crows would fly along this flyway, visiting all the three nests. However, on September 7 the nest near the rubbish dump disappeared without a trace. On September 8 the nest in front of the clinic vanished and the next day the nest in the yellow flame tree was nowhere to be seen. I came to the conclusion that these three nests were trial nests that the pair of young crows was building.

Contributed by Dr Wu Eu Heng, images by YC & WEH

Comments by R. Subaraj: Dr Wu offers a couple of interesting views but more observations are required
before these behaviour patterns can be fully understood and taken as normal. This includes the suggested cooperative encouraging by the group of crows for the fledglings to leave their nest and the trial nests being built by what is
taken as young crows.

The following is an account that I wrote up in the late 1980s, and came across recently when sorting out old papers.

Working in my study in the late afternoon of June 1st 1988, a tap tapping noise brought me to the window, rather expecting to see a Greater Coucal (Centropus sinensis) dealing with a garden snail/giant snail (Achatina fulica) on the path next to the garden. However, the noise was coming from what looked like an Asian Glossy Starling (Aplonis panayensis) standing on a small, bricked terrace on a slope of the garden. I rushed for the binoculars and indeed there was now another AGS holding a snail shell in its beak and bashing it on the ground. After what was considered sufficient effort, it put the shell down, gripped part of the exposed snail with its beak and pulled and waved it in the air so that the shell and snail parted company and the snail disappeared into the AGS. Thereupon the two birds flew off and I sped out to gather the evidence. They had been eating the land snail Hemiplecta sp., which are flattish, about 2-2.5 cm in diameter, and 0.5 cm thick.

Once I was indoor again, the birds reassembled for the second performance, having added a third member to the cast. They were walking around on the brick terrace looking for snails under the plants and on the side of the bricks. They each found at least one snail, but one (the newcomer?) was not yet adept at bashing, and so one of the others took over and finished that snail off. Then, looking just like mynas, they walked a few feet up the short grass into the long grass by the fence, disappeared and came out one after the other with a snail, found on the concrete footing of the fence. One tapped his or her snail on the brick again. Another flew onto a bit of old pipe sticking out of the adjacent old water tank and tried tapping on that, but the snail fell off when put down.

Two evenings later, when at home in the early evening, I saw the trio (presumably the same three adult birds), plus an immature bird, repeating their dietary adventure. They foraged at the edge of the brick path, by plant pots under a jackfruit tree and in the brick terrace. In the adjacent part of the neighbour’s garden they foraged near old plant pots on a cleared patch of ground under an old flame tree. They tapped the snails on the brick path, on the wide branches of the flame tree, and on the neighbour’s tiled roof. Once the shell had been well bashed, the snail seemed to come out pretty easily. I never saw any of the birds appear to hold the shell with the foot whilst pulling the snail out (as compared with my memory of the Greater Coucal’s struggle with the much larger garden snails).

I saw and heard the starlings eating snails probably one or two more evenings, and then no more. At first I wondered why they had given up on what seemed such a good source of food. A while later, when certain plants were flourishing, I realized that were hardly any land snails around, and that the birds may well have exhausted the supply in my garden. Whether the gang of four took their skills off to benefit some other gardener, or whether they all died of liver failure, I don’t know – let alone how the first two birds got the idea to come to the ground level and take up snail whacking.

Last evening was the sixth day since the nest was built by a pair of House Crows (Corvus splendens) (see 1). A crow was seen hopping in and out of the nest every 5 minutes. Its mate was preening itself a few branches away. Just as the former settled itself in the nest, there was a commotion.

The time was about 7.30 pm, quite dark then. I could make out a large greyish bird perched on a lower branch, slowly and deliberately flapping its outstretched wings. Then I saw another bird a few branches away doing exactly the same. Suddenly both birds appeared above the nest and there was a flurry of wings and what looked like an attack on the nest. This was followed by loud cawing, giving the impression that a crow was hurt. I could not see clearly if there were 3 or 4 birds in that mad scramble around the nest. Just as suddenly, the attacking birds flew off leaving the nesting crow still mournfully cawing away.

There was another shorter attack 15 minutes later. Then 20 minutes later I noticed another bird flapping its wings on the lower branches, but no more raids.

I presume those grey birds must be female Asian Koels (Eudynamys scolopacea), for just before 7 pm a female was chased away by a watchful crow. Also at that time there were koels calling in the nearest of the distant trees.

Tonight it happened again at 7.25 pm!

A crow had just settled onto the nest; its mate had sat in during its 5 minutes break before flying away. A minute later two koels called, and when they were a few branches away the nesting crow flew out and chased them off. The crow cawed for its mate but it was nowhere in sight. Five minutes later a koel was again seen around the nest. Again the crow flew out to chase it away. A female koel suddenly landed on the nest, flapping its wings before it too was chased away.

Did it drop an egg?

The third attempt at the nest saw the koel crying out as it was attacked by the crow. The crow cawed again for its mate after the attack.

Tonight’s episode was not as dramatic as last night’s. All was dark and quiet by 7.45 pm.

Contributed by Angie Ng, 26th December 2005; image also by Angie, taken on the same day at 11.50 am.