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.

Opel Mok sent this message on 22nd October 2008:

“We were supplying fuel to this vessel M.V. ”Harrier” when this pigeon flew onto us! There was another one still on the “Harrier”. The vessel’s last port of call was S. Korea and I think they must had mistook the eagle from that funnel to be their target and home in!

“It had the tag No. KLPR 2008 233682 and from those Chinese stampings on the wings I think they were from Taiwan. It was quite weak; we fed it and set it free two days later.

“On the third day it came back to us! Hope it will take off back to Taiwan.”

The pigeon was caught on 17th October 2008 and both were still on board on the 21st when Opel left the vessel.

KLPR obviously refers to racing pigeons. Anyone with any background information please register their comments or contact us or the relevant organisation. Thanks.

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.