Ng Bee Choo reported seeing a juvenile Red-legged Crake (Rallina fasciata) at the Singapore Botanic Gardens’ Visitor’s Centre. The bird usually appears around 1900-1930 hours (at dusk) to feed. This was the same place where she earlier saw an adult bathing in a puddle of water after a burst of rain.

The juvenile that she encountered was not shy but was frightened by loud noises. It usually hangs around under cover of vegetation, to emerge when it deemed safe.

Yue Yun has also seen it a few times. So had Prof Ng Soon Chye, who recently videoed an old juvenile pulling an earthworm from the ground. The bird was going around pecking the ground when it detected an earthworm. Suddenly it pulled out the reluctant worm.

“I have seen the adult Red-legged Crake too. It seems that there is a family living near the car park,” says Bee Choo.

There is indeed a family there, consisting of the parents and a juvenile. They are regularly seen foraging under cover of the vegetation, to emerge into the grassy area in the late evening.

Images by KC Tsang.

On 14th December 2007 at about 0745 hours, the morning silence was suddenly broken by the loud squawking of about 20 Long-tailed Parakeet (Psittacula longicauda) in my garden.

Most of the birds descended on my ceram palms (Rhopaloblaste ceramica) while a few were on one of my Alexandra palms (Archontophoenix alexandrae). This latter palm was bearing female flowers and the birds were crowding on the inflorescence branches.

And they were busy pecking on the female flowers and eating them.

Now, palm flowers are unisexual, meaning there are male and female (left) flowers. These are borne in threes on massive inflorescence branches. Usually there are one female flanked by two male flowers. The male flowers mature first followed by the female.

In the case of this Alexandra palm, the male flowers had developed earlier and all that were left were female flowers. There were bees around these flowers as they secrete nectar. So these parakeets were feasting on the nectar given out by the female flowers.

“On January 30th, Melanie Votaw (from USA), along with Shamla Subaraj and I, came across a Yellow Bittern (Ixobrychus sinensis) with a lizard in it’s bill, at Serangoon. Over the next 5 minutes, we watched the bird adjust the reptile into the right position before swallowing it completely.

“Yellow Bitterns are mostly migrants from the north and can be found in suitable areas throughout Singapore. They mainly feed at the edge of water-bodies and waterways, fishing for fish, tadpoles and invertebrates. However, they will also hunt nearby fields and vegetation for whatever terrestrial creatures they can find.

“The skink that this bittern caught was identified as a Common Sun Skink (Mabuya multifasciata), a common species around Singapore, by Dr Leong Tzi Ming. His reason being that the body is bulky, head rather robust and undersides pale white. Kelvin KP Lim agrees with the identification.

“This adds another food item to the Yellow Bittern’s prey menu.”

Note: In the images above, the bittern, after catching the skink, carefully manipulates it so that it can be swallowed head-first. Once the body is swallowed and only the tail is left, the bird needs to stand upright with its neck fully stretched to allow the skink to slide down the throat and into the stomach (below).

Images by Melanie Votaw, ID of skink by Dr Leong Tzi Ming and Kelvin KP Lim.

By now the blog’s new appearance is obvious to all who logs in.

When we started in July 2005, it was with a Blogger account (top left). We blogged for 18 months before Jacqueline Lau came along and suggested we shift to WordPress, a “state-of-the-art” personal publishing platform (top right).

After an initial hesitation, I agreed. Jac did all the work, planning, designing, archiving, etc. And I did all the postings. Of course the observations, images and even entire stories came from our supporters.

One year into this new publishing platform, along came Jac again to institute more changes. This time she introduced new themes for a more modern and youthful outlook. Many new features have been incorporated, my favourite being the world map. Click on the small map on the right side of this page and a larger image appears, showing in detail which part of the world the different visitors came from (top, at time of post).

Since 7th February 2008 we are a member of Nature Blog Network. Of the currently 132 sites that are members, blogging on aspects of nature (plants, animals and ecosystems), we were ranked 57 on 14th February. At the time of posting, we have moved up to 40.

This blog needs to remain attractive to visitors. Thus there is a constant need for improvement - in appearance, quality of posts, etc. in order to remain vibrant. Otherwise it will stagnate. This is where we value your input.

Thank you Jac… and all you generous photographers and observant birders who contributed to the success of BESG.

On 8th February 2008, Simon Cockayne and Martin Kennewell spent a morning birding at Changi Cove (above). The highlight of their trip was seeing six to eight birds of the newly described “White-faced” Plover.

Simon sent in images of the Malaysian (left top) and White-faced (left bottom) Plovers that he digiscoped, the birds being some distance away.

As Martin writes: “We went in on the new road to the air show. The guard was very reasonable and allowed us entry, we did explain that we wanted to access the coast beyond the air show to go bird watching. We signed the visitor’s book and were given a visitors pass. We drove about two kilometres to where the road u-turns… that allows you to access the coast. It is then a further one kilometre on foot to the site.”

Their morning tally: Lesser Sand Plover (c250), Pacific Golden Plover (c150), Grey Plover (c50), Malaysian Plover (10), Kentish Plover (<5), Red-necked Stint (1), Common Sandpiper (4+), Common Tern (8), Terek Sandpiper (1), Oriental Pratincole (4 flying north), "White-faced" Plover (4 males, 2 non-males, plus maybe 2/3 more).

Note: The White-faced Plover is a “mystery” plover first observed by Peter Kennerley (in Singapore, 1993-4) and David Bakewell (in Malaysia, 2006-7) and described in an article published in Surfbirds.com.

These birds occur during the northern winter months of October to March together with flocks of Kentish Plovers (Charadrius alexandrinus), and like the latter, appear to undertake a pre-breeding moult between January and March, suggesting a northern origin. After considering the possibilities of them being hybrids (Kentish x Malaysian), having aberrant plumage or being a poorly known race of a common species, or even an undescribed taxon, the authors concluded that it is most probably a new taxon. However, they suggest that detailed comparison of biometrics and DNA of these birds with those of known taxa be undertaken for comparison.