On 1st October 2008, Jay Tan a.k.a. jay documented a series of images of a Stork-billed Kingfisher (Halcyon capensis) picking off pieces of rotting wood off its perch at the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve.

“Was at SBWR yesterday and saw this storky picking off tree bark from the branch it was perching on. It went on to whack the bark around and did something like munching on it… It did not swallow the entire bark though and finally dropped it. What is it actually trying to do? Anybody can shed some light?”

Stork-billed Kingfisher feeds mainly on fish, crabs and other crustaceans. It also takes frogs, lizards, rodents, young birds and insects like beetles as well as insect larvae. Its perch in the images above is a rotting branch. It is possible that the bird was pecking off pieces to expose insect larvae…

Image by Jay Tan.

This post is a cooperative effort between www.naturepixels.org and BESG to bring the study of bird behaviour through photography to a wider audience.

At about 6pm on the 17th October 2008, a male (Anthracoceros albirostris) visited the apartment building at Transit Road where Morten Strange and Ng Bee Choo are residing. The large bird perched on the verandah railing and looked into the glass window of the apartment.

Before Bee Choo and son Mark were able to invite it in, the hornbill flew off to land on the roof of a nearby building.

According to Morten, “The exact origin of this bird is not certain. It is the male bird in a noisy family group that often flies around our estate, including the Sembawang Road roadside trees etc. They come out of the nearby Seletar Reservoir Park and forest area, a long-established territory for this species. A couple who ran a small food kiosk there for a while used to feed the group banana and papaya every evening and they quickly became quite tame and bold.

“With such mobile birds and an expanding population, it is a mystery to me why during the nine years when I was operating the Botanic Gardens Shop, I never saw or heard any hornbill there. There are so many fruiting trees there and nice open greenery with some large trees that this species likes. No-one has ever seen it there, as far as I know …?”

Our bird specialist, R. Subaraj has this to say: “…I have mentioned before that the Upper Seletar Reservoir population started in the late 1980s, with a mixed race pair (1 northern and 1 southern), indicating that they were escapees. They bred successfully at the park and the offspring spread down the eastern part of the Central Catchment Nature Reserve to Lower Peirce and MacRitchie. Subsequent sightings from Toa Payoh and the recent Woodleigh record are probably from this feral population. Morten and Bee Choo’s sighting is likely from this population too.

“Either birds from this feral population or from fresh introduction accounts for the birds seen at Bukit Tinggi and Binjai Park area.

“While this feral population may not have reached the Botanical Gardens yet, they could eventually. The Gardens have supported a couple of escaped Great Hornbills for many years in the past and there is a record of an escaped White-crowned Hornbill there too.”

Images by Ng Bee Choo.

It is always pleasant to see an adult bird feeding its fledgling. It is sometimes puzzling to witness an adult feeding a fledgling of a different species. But when the fledgling is larger than the adult, it is a different feeling altogether.

I suppose this was what Adrina Lim a.k.a. wmw998 felt when he documented a babbler feeding a very much larger Drongo Cuckoo (Surniculus lugubris) that looks so very different. One wonders how the adult is not able to recognize that the baby is not her own.

“Well, this is the second time that I saw a cuckoo being fed by a little bird. The previous was back in 2004, when I was not into photography yet, and it was a different specie of cuckoo then, being taken care of by a pair of sunbirds… yes, sunbirds. This time, I had my tool in hand, and these are the shots that make me, a human being, feeling ashamed sometimes. Call it stupidity if you like, but in the animal kingdom, love does exist, unreservedly, between ‘races’ ! Just can’t imagine such a tiny bird can bring up a bird five times its size…”

The fledgling, like all fledglings, simply sit tight on its perch and begged loudly all the time – for the parents to feed it. A growing chick, always hungry, has an insatiable appetite. The smaller adults need to work extra hard to feed the growing giant. Our bird specialist, R Subaraj identified the babbler as Chestnut-winged Babbler (Stachyris erythroptera).

This is another example of nest parasitism by the wily cuckoos.

Image by Adrian Lim.

This post is a cooperative effort between NaturePixels.org and BESG to bring the study of bird behaviour through photography to a wider audience.

Choo Teik Ju a.k.a choo was in China recently and brought back images of a female Blue-winged Leafbird taken from the Liuxihe National Forest Park, Conghua.

The bird had an injured right foot but this did not prevent her from moving from tree to tree foraging and from perching on the branches. Other than the injured foot, the bird was healthy and just as active as a normal bird.

This post is a cooperative effort between www.naturepixels.org and BESG to bring the study of bird behaviour through photography to a wider audience.

On 18th October 2008, photographers had a field day at the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve when a Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata) was spotted among a flock of Whimbrels (Numenius phaeopus) by Robert Teo, among others. This is an uncommon non-breeding winter visitor and passage migrant that begins to arrive as early as 24th August till 22nd March.

This curlew is one of the largest of the waders and has an exceptionally long and decurved bill. According to Gils & Wiersma (1996), a curved bill results in a great reduction in the size of the tongue. So the bird has to remove prey from the substrate before swallowing it. The prey is transported to the mouth by “head-jerking and a coordinated opening and shutting of the mandibles”.

On the other hand, a long, straight bill of the snipe and woodcock with an open bill cavity and long tongue enables the bird to transport prey inside the bill while it is still inserted in the substrate.

Generally, “shorebirds species that predominantly forage by probing in small holes and crevices have the most curved bills, whereas species that probe in the firmest substrate will have relatively straight bills.”

It is interesting to know that different people observe different things when encountering birds in the field. In this case, most birdwatchers simply saw a Eurasian Curlew among the other waders. But Ben Lee was impressed by the larger size of the curlew as compared to the Whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus).

Then we have Jacqueline Lau who commented: “One observation of interest was that it had a tendency to act rather aggressively towards the Whimbrels (it’ll snap at them if they came near), but tolerated the greenshanks even when the smaller waders had it 
surrounded in close proximity.
”

Image by Jacqueline Lau.

Reference:
Gils, van J. & P. Wiersma, 1996. Family Scolopacidae (Sandpipers, Snipes and Phalaropes. In del Hoyo, J., A. Elliott & J. Sargatal (eds.), Handbook of the birds of the world. Vol. 3. Hoatzin to Auks. Lynx Editions, Barcelona. Pp. 444-533.