Asian Urban Birding (Part 3) - Singapore (cont'd)

Sunday Morning in Singapore City

Up early again for more birds, but this time on my own and I'd decided to stay local.  Leaving the hotel I couldn't find a cab so ended up walking through central Singapore with my bins and camera, working my way to my destination, a newish park called Gardens By The Bay.  This park is really, very Singapore - it's new, clean, and obviously very expensive.  A large area of reclaimed land by the water that has been immaculately landscaped with dense plantings, multiple water features, lots of sculpture, and some interesting restaurants and exhibits.  It's certainly not the wilderness, but there were a lot of birds there .....

Singapore is quite literally stuffed with bird photographers.  They outnumber birders dozens to one, and most of the birding sites I'd visited that weekend were thick with them.  I'd heard that there were some good birds at the Gardens - a Black Bittern and some Wandering Whistling-Ducks - and so I wandered around the various ponds looking for them.  Then I rounded a corner and there were 30 photographers standing next to a lotus pond .... I guess I'd found the right place ....

Black Bittern (above) and Yellow Bittern (below)

Wandering Whistling-Ducks

White-throated Kingfisher

This particular lotus pond seemed to be bird-central at the park and perhaps as many as 50 photographers (but no birders) came and went while I spent a half hour there.  The Whistling-Ducks were in this pond along with 4 Yellow Bitterns, an Oriental Reed-Warbler and the Black Bittern even flew in for a quick visit.  

While everyone seemed to be in that one area, I got itchy feet and decided to wander off to see if I could find more species.  Most things around the park were the local common species but I did find a Tiger Shrike (such a cool name for a bird) and some White-rumped Munias among other things.  I also saw a Peregrine Falcon which somehow seemed very out out place over a park in the tropics.  In total I saw 33 species, not bad for a park in the center of a major city.

Olive-backed Sunbird, female - the common sunbird in Singapore

Tiger Shrike - such a cool name for a bird.

Pink-necked Pigeon - pretty bird, but it's the most common pigeon locally.

Too soon though, it was time to leave.  I had to check out of the hotel and, after an epic lunch (Singapore is the most amazing food city with an epic fusion of Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Western influences) it was time to head to the airport for the next flight .... off to Hong Kong!

Asian Urban Birding (Part 2) - Singapore

A Full Saturday of Birding and Natural History in Singapore

After Tokyo, I took the long, late flight down to Singapore on Wednesday night, got settled at the ParkRoyal Hotel (very eco / green) and worked all day Thursday and Friday.  Saturday was a long-planned day off though and I'd arranged to meet local birding expert Lim Kim Chuah for a full day in the 'wilds' of the island.  Friday night, I met an old friend for dinner at the excellent National Kitchen restaurant and ate an excellent, and very local fish-head curry (how could I not order that when I saw it on the menu?).  I also drank a lot of cocktails - NEVER drink with Australians - so I set the alarm, then moved it to the other side of the hotel room so I'd be sure to get up.

Saturday March 5th - Various Singapore Hotspots

5:30am and we were on our way to the Central Catchment Preserve, Singapore's only remaining tract of real forest, preserved to protect the watershed around the main reservoir.  We arrived at the trail head well before dawn and walked the mile or so in to the reservoir in complete darkness, hoping for owls, and we did in fact hear some - a couple of Brown Boobooks and a couple of Sunda Scops-Owls.   Both species were calling close to the trail but we never did get a look at either, and as dawn started to approach their voices were replaced with those of Great Racket-tailed Drongos, Ruddy Kingfisher and a bunch of Blue-winged Pittas.

As the light came up, we started to actually see birds, including a close view of one of the Pittas, and over the next couple of hours we had really solid tropical birding adding 41 species of forest birds.

Dollar bird (above) and Banded Woodpecker (below) 

Long-tailed Macaque - we encountered a group of mostly females with young
on the trail.

Next stop was the Sungie Buloh Wetland Preserve, a very well organized series of trails and boardwalks in a coastal mangrove area.  We were here to focus mostly on shorebirds, but they didn't really cooperate for us.  What we had here instead was a very cool general natural history experience.  The visit started with a specialty bird, a Copper-throated Sunbird and we also soon added a good mix of herons, egrets, kingfishers, etc.  I was personally much more into the mangrove habitat though and spent most of the visit photographing things you more usually only see on natural history TV show - Archer Fish, Mudskippers, Water Monitors and even 2 Estuarine Crocodiles (the "Saltwater" Crocodile of Steve Irwin / Crocodile Hunter fame).

Helpful advice should you encounter an Estuarine Crocodile - the crocodile below
was just across the channel from this sign.

Asian Water Monitor with (non-native) Red-eared Slider friend

Fish Watching!  Archer Fish sp. and Mudskipper sp.

Tearing ourselves away from the mangroves we crossed back to the East side of the Island to look for a Spotted Wood-Owl, a life bird for me.  A juvenile owl had been roosting in Pasir Ris Park hopefully set up nicely for me to see along with a Buffy Fish-Owl that normally roosts in the same area (another potential lifer and a bird I'd missed several times before on Asia trips).  Two staked out life owls in one park, sounded like an awesome stop.

Trouble is ...... I have terrible karma with owls, I typically just don't find them.  Other people can walk through a forest and spot all sorts of roosting owls, I have trouble finding them even when I know where they are.  I have a theory that there is an 'owl-gene' ... some people have it, I don't.

So arriving at the park, we quickly racked up a decent list of good birds while heading to owl site number 1.  Thirty minutes later, with no sign of the owl, we gave up and tried for owl number 2 .... nada!  Another typical Welsh Birder dips owls scenario ... one I'm all too familiar with.

Red Junglefowl are quite common in Singapore and this Oriental Pied-Hornbill
was also quite confiding in the park.

On the way back to the car we decided to give the Wood-Owl one more try and (and this really NEVER HAPPENS) this time I actually spotted the Spotted Wood-Owl.  Life bird!

The Spotted Wood-Owl that I spotted!

Next stop .... Plovers!  Five Species of Plover in two quick stops (well four species and one upcoming split).  We picked up a Pacific Golden-Plover then added Malaysian Plover, Kentish Plover, Lesser Sand-Plover and a 'Swinhoe's Plover'.  This last form, the white-faced form of Kentish Plover seems destined for species status and so it was good to get one on my list just in case.

Malaysian Plover (above) and Lesser Sand-Plover (below)

Long-tailed Shrike

Running out of time, we had just enough energy for one more stop.  Kim Chuah had checked with friends and found the location of another roosting Buffy Fish-Owl so off we went for yet another attempt at this species.  We had spectacularly precise directions though so we quickly went to the Singapore Botanical Gardens, found the trail, found the vine that marked the roost, located the tree, and .... found the Buffy Fish-Owl.  Another life bird!

Buffy Fish-Owl ... my fourth attempt at this species and success!

So exhausted, and very happy, with 88 species of bird and a host of other vertebrate species, I got dropped back at the hotel.  Great day!

Asian Urban Birding (Part 1) - Tokyo

A Day Off in Central Tokyo

Just back from a business trip to Asia which included visits to Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore.  The trip was spread over several weeks so I was able to grab at least part of one day in each city to go birding.

Sunday February 28th - Meiji Shrine / Imperial Palace Moat

I have a tradition in Tokyo - fly on Friday night, arrive on Saturday night, and take the Sunday off to recover from jet-lag before heading to the office on Monday morning.  I've been to Tokyo 19 times in all, and I've quite often done the same thing on my free Sunday mornings.  I like to start my trip with a visit to the Meiji Shrine, an active temple set in a beautiful block of mature woodland in Central Tokyo.  The locals go for religious reasons or to view the iris garden in season, I got for the birds.

Arriving at the shrine, I started to re-familiarize myself with the local birds and bird calls.  In Tokyo, two species are absolutely ubiquitous and their calls are constantly heard in or near any patch of green.  Large-billed Crows and Brown-eared Bulbuls are the 'sounds of Tokyo' for me and sure enough, with were creating quite a racket as I came into the park.  Putting them aside though, I started to work my way around the paths looking for the good variety of woodland birds that Winter there and soon started to pick out some better things.

Among the regular birds at the Meiji Shrine, Japanese Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Japanese Pygmy-Woodpecker, and the local specialty Varied Tit work the canopy while Dusky and Pale Thrushes shuffle around in the leaf-litter.  I was also able to pick out a Japanese Brush-Warbler, a Red-flanked Bluetail, a Brown-headed Thrush, and four different individual Hawfinches, a personal favorite.  In all I saw 24 species of birds in a couple of hours of wandering the trails.  Not a huge list, but some nice things and a very pleasant start to my Asia birding adventure.

Hawfinches are quiet and easy to overlook

Varied Tit is a bit of a speciality bird in Tokyo, I think many Western birders
got their life Varied Tit here

Dusky Thrush, the most common of perhaps a half-dozen thrush species possible
at the Shrine.

 Perhaps the best bird of the day took me a while to log on to.  As I walked the paths I kept hearing a loud 'key-kek-kek-kek' call and couldn't for the life of me think of what it might be.  Some sort of woodpecker perhaps, it just didn't sound right, and yet the call was oddly familiar - I knew I'd heard it before somewhere.  The mystery was solved after about half an hour when a male Northern Goshawk flew in front of me and perched, somewhat backlit, above the path.  Felt a bit slow for not realizing sooner, but it was a real pleasure to get up close and personal with a species that I usually see only as a 'zoom-past' in the North woods.

Northern Goshawk

Finishing up at the garden mid-morning, and really enjoying a beautiful Spring day outdoors I decided to keep birding and walked several miles, doing a complete circuit of the Imperial Palace Moat.  Another beautiful spot, this one with picturesque stone fortifications, sculptural pine trees and a shallow moat stuffed with waterfowl.

The majority of the ducks were familiar Eurasian Wigeon, Common (Green-winged) Teal, Tufted Ducks, etc.  but there was a distinct Asian feel from species like Eastern Spot-billed Duck and Falcated Duck.

Eastern Spot-billed Duck (above) and Falcated Duck (below)

Given the amount of time I spent there I also bumped into a few land birds, perhaps the best of which was a soaring Eastern Buzzard and a surprise Bull-headed Shrike feeding on the grassy banks of the moat.  A beautiful day and a really nice mix of birds, although my feet were killing me by the time I got back to the hotel that evening.  Worth it for the great birds though ...

Tuesday March 1st - Hibeki Park

On this trip, the office and the hotel (Palace Hotel, Tokyo) were actually both right next to good birding spots, and given the odd routine of an Asia  business trip (which often involves being on conference calls in the middle of the night) I was able to grab a half hour in one of the local parks on the way to and from the office.

Hibeki Park is a very typical Japanese urban park in that every square inch of the place is used.  The park isn't large but it contains several restaurants, children's play areas, sports areas, tennis courts, etc.  On the plus side though, it also contains several ornamental ponds and some garden areas that seem good for birds.  Even on a quick visit I was able to add Little Egret, Common Kingfisher, another Red-flanked Bluetail and a Daurian Redstart, all good urban birds.

Japanese Cormorant

Wednesday March 2nd - Hamarikyu Gardens

Another odd morning with conference calls at 4am and 5am but then no scheduled meetings until 9am.  Making the most of the gap, I grabbed a cab and rushed over to the Hamarikyu Gardens (a former Imperial duck-hunting preserve) only to find that it didn't open until 9am (argh!).  With an hour to kill though, and no cabs in sight, I wandered over to some nearby piers that gave me a view of Tokyo Bay.  This oversight on my part actually produced the best bird of the Tokyo visit as, while scanning the bay for grebes and ducks, I came across a gull roost that had a really great mix of species at close range.  There were probably about 100 gulls on this little breakwater, about 80 of them were Black-headed Gulls but there were also Herring (including some 'Vega' Gulls), Mew, Slaty-backed and Black-tailed Gulls in the mix.  There was also a very small gull sitting in a row of Black-headed Gulls.  At fist I thought this bird was a Little Gull, just based on the size difference, but it didn't look quite right somehow not 'cute' enough, the black bill seemed too big as well.  The plumage, absent the bill looked just like the Black-headed Gulls around it, but the size was so obviously different.  As I walked away to head back for my meetings I was still thinking Little Gull, but then the 'penny dropped' ... Saunders's Gull!  A life bird for me, and something I just wasn't expecting to see.  A great way to end the Tokyo portion of the trip.

Rusty Blackbirds and Thick-billed Murres

Mopping up some year birds and county birds on Long Island

So the plan today revolved around two target birds - Rusty Blackbird, which I needed for the year and for my Suffolk County Life List, and Barrow's Goldeneye, which would only have been a year bird, but I like them a lot, probably my favorite duck in the world.

First stop was Fuch's Pond in NorthWestern Suffolk County, one of a number of potential Rusty Blackbird spots I'd planned out from eBird.  This is a species that really isn't doing well in the US, with populations having crashed over the last twenty years.  On Long Island it's gone from being a regular wintering bird in numbers to being decidedly scarce during the time I've lived here.  When I first moved to New York I'm guessing that hundreds wintered on Long Island, but today the number of wintering birds might be a dozen or so, and given their wandering nature they've become decidedly hard to see.  My plan today was to devote the whole morning to the species though, and hit all the spots where they had been seen this Winter.

By 8:00am, I pulled into Fuch's Pond, having already had a year bird when a Killdeer flew over the car on the way in.  Rusty Blackbirds had been seen here regularly over the past couple of week so I was pretty optimistic about bumping into one (although I had three other possible sites lined up just in case).  Indeed, as I walked the trails at the preserve and could swear I was hearing a blackbird but couldn't see one, but as I came back to the parking lot, there it was, a Rusty Blackbird perched on top of a tree doing it's weird gurgling call - Suffolk County Bird #309!

Luck was clearly on my side this morning so I hit some other local spots and quickly added a couple more year birds with Purple Finch and Winter Wren joining the list.  So by 9:30am, I'd run out of things to do locally, and knowing that I had to wait for the low tide in the late afternoon for the Barrow's, I suddenly had time to burn.  Checking the Listserve, the answer was obvious ... time for a quick trip to Montauk.

During the week someone had found a Thick-billed Murre at Montauk (same place I had one last Winter).  While it was just a year bird, any Murre is a good bird in New York and I was surprised that this one had lasted so long.  Generally speaking, a Murre that comes into a harbor is not a healthy Murre and so by now I thought this bird would be making its way through the digestive system of a Great Back-backed Gull.  So when I saw that it had been reported alive and well in the morning, I though I may as well go and see it.

Bonaparte's Gull (2 shots)

By 12:30pm I arrived at Montauk Inlet and started to scan ... and nope, no Murre.  Remembering where last year's bird had spent it's time, I repositioned to Star Island and joined some other birders in scanning for the bird, but still no Murre.  Then, as luck would have it, some birders who I'd never seen there before showed up and said they'd just had the Murre on the East Jetty of  Montauk Inlet.  So everyone back in the cars, quick run around Lake Montauk and scopes out at the East Jetty.  Couple of Snow Buntings, nice ... five Great Cormorants, nice ... Thick-billed Murre!

Thick-billed Murre - not yet Gull food ...

Turns out we seemed to be a having a mini Thick-billed Murre invasion this week with several other birds reported on the East End and even one found that day in Brooklyn.

So mission accomplished and back to the original plan, an almost certain Barrow's Goldeneye at Sand's Point in Nassau County.  Well let's just say that lucky streaks don't last forever and there's no such thing as a certain thing in birding.   After an hour and half of scope work, I came up empty.  Oh well, such is birding ...

Chasing Gold in Dutchess County

A quick run North for a Golden Eagle (because sometimes you have to do things like that)

So, to be honest, I might just be getting a little tired of Long Island birding, so this morning I figured it was time for a change. One of the most intriguing eBird reports locally this year has been a single Golden Eagle that has been seen regularly in Dutchess County (about an hour and a half North of the City on the East bank of the Hudson River).  So for a little variety in the birding diet, I figured I'd head up that way on Sunday morning and so hit the road at 7am with eagles on my mind.

Based on the eBird reports I had just the vaguest idea of where the eagle was hanging out but when I got to the area it didn't take me long to work out what was going on.  I quickly added Pileated Woodpecker and Eastern Bluebird to the year list and then was thrilled to add a Ring-necked Pheasant.  Then I saw another pheasant, then two more, then .... well let's just say they were everywhere, with perhaps 50 or more in the fields near Dover Plains.  Turns out that the area has several gun clubs and that they obviously stock a LOT of pheasants (all the birds I saw today were male by the way).  These pheasants were also obviously recently released ... by which I mean they were DUMB!  I had to stop the car to let one of these birds wander slowly across the road in front of me .... he was lucky that time ... but when I came back to the same place an hour later, sure enough there was a roadkill pheasant on the roadside.  But it solved the mystery of why so many raptors seem to be hanging around in this rea ... lots of pheasant meat ....

One of many, very dumb, pheasants ...

I wasn't here for pheasants though so I started cruising the roads looking for raptors and soon started to see eagles ... well Bald Eagles, and lots of them.  There were at least ten Bald Eagles just loafing around on tall trees in the river valley and, with more time looking, also lots of Red-tailed Hawks, a Cooper's Hawk and a really pretty adult Red-shouldered Hawk.  But no Golden Eagle, so I spent a couple of hours scanning and driving the roads hoping to bump into the star bird.

After almost two hours of this routine, I drive a road I'd tried several times before, but which gave a good view of a broad river valley, and there, I finally saw a kettle of soaring birds.
2 Red-tailed Hawks ...
2 Bald Eagles ...
a Sharp-shinned Hawk ...
a super-high Black Vulture ... very cool ... and a year bird ...
and what's that ....
GOLDEN EAGLE!
So I jumped out of the car to try to get some records shots ... and I'm afraid that's pretty much all I got ....

Golden Eagle (two shots) - distant and heavily cropped, but it's a Golden Eagle! 

So very happy with my morning in Dutchess County, and I managed to move my Dutchess County list from a 'pitiful' 18-species to a 'just embarrassing' 43-species ... still, it's progress.

On the way back I stopped in another much neglected county, one I really never bird in), and chased a Black-headed Gull in Larchmont in Westchester County.  Needless to say I dipped (second Black-headed Gull dip of the weekend), but I was still pretty happy with my expedition to the North of the City.

Update:  turns out that the area I birded today was subject to some controversy in past years where birders did not respect local landowner rights and trespassed on private property.  Would not have published the exact location had I known, and I've since removed many of the exact details.  If you saw the original post and plan to go, please be very careful to respect the locals and property rights.  Lots of places to see eagles, no need to cause controversy.

Harlequin Ducks and Purple Sandpipers

A few more year birds from (mostly) Nassau County, NY ....

A late start today but I'd worked out an itinerary in advance so I felt like I was getting some productive birding in anyway.  First stop was Jamaica Bay where a quick, snowy, hike in to the East Pond produced a good mix of waterfowl including all three mergansers and a drake Eurasian Wigeon.  Then on to Nassau County and a quick stop at Caarmann's Pond Park to pick up Black-crowned Night Heron for the year list - this seems to be a great spot for wintering night herons with at least ten in view while I was there.  As an added bonus I also saw a Rough-legged Hawk from the Meadowbrook Parkway shortly thereafter - the day was starting out really well.

One of 10 Black-crowned Night Herons at the pond

And then on to Jones Beach, which I've visited several times this year so far, but today I vowed to get out of the car and do some real birding.  Ironically, the first good bird I saw was very much from the car - as I pulled into the West End parking lot several birders had re-found the Lark Sparrow that I originally found a few weeks ago.

I found this Lark Sparrow several weeks ago ...

The bird was on narrow entrance road, so while the birders wanted to see it, the non-birder cars behind resented the delay in getting to the beach parking lot.  I tried to stop and get photos but in the end I had to just grab a record shot and move on.  Interestingly, of the 5 (?) Lark Sparrows that showed up in late December / early January, only this one is still here (or still alive?).  

I've always thought of the walk out to the Jetty at Jones Beach as a bit of a 'death march' as, despite being only three-quarters of a mile, the soft sand makes the walk a cardio work out.  Today of course a layer of soft snow lay on top of the soft sand so extra cardio for all ... but it's not like I don't need it.  Once I  eventually got there though, it really was quite birdy - Common Eiders, Long-tailed Ducks, Horned Grebes, Red-throated Loons, and a single Razorbill under a flock of 30+ Bonaparte's Gulls.  The jetty itself also had a very photogenic group of 15+ Purple Sandpipers and a single Harlequin Duck, both of which I managed to get photos of.  This tiny jetty is an isolated piece of rocky shore habitat in a land of land featureless sand beaches and so it does tend to be a regular spot for both these quintessential rocky shore birds - very nice to get them so close and cooperative though.

15 Purple Sandpipers and a Harlequin Duck were hanging out at the Jetty. 

After slogging back to the parking lot, I decided to stay on foot and keep working the pine trees in the entrance road median,  The weather was actually a balmy 40-degrees so it was actually quite pleasant trying to pick up some land birds.  Nothing super-unusual had been seen recently but my goal was Red-breasted Nuthatch for the year list and a half an hour later I managed to find one closer to the Coast Guards Station.  Mission accomplished and on to other things.

After that I hit a bit of a lull.  Poking around Jones Beach and Southern Nassau County hoping for some shorebirds didn't really produce very much so I decided to look for Monk Parakeets instead.  Driving along route 27A - a densely packed and busy strip of suburban shops and small businesses - is usually a good bet for finding them.  I found one nest fairly easily in Babylon but there were no parakeets in residence.  Short thereafter though, while stopped at a red light, I happened to look up, waiting for the light to turn green, and sure enough, there was some 'green' on the light.  I wonder if these lights are heat lamps for the parakeets, they certainly seem very adept at using man-made heat-sources to make the Winter more bearable for them.

And so back to the City.  A stop at Bush Terminal Piers Park, where several good gulls (a Black-headed Gull and a Glaucous Gull) had been seen earlier in the day, was cut short when the park ranger (?) closed the park at 4pm and asked all the birders to leave.  But here will be other days ....

Jaguars in the U.S.

Sharing a great article from the L.A. Times ...

Always fascinated by stories about big cats in the U.S. there are many more than people think - Ocelots, Margays, and Jaguars along with the more common Mountain Lions, Canadian Lynx and Bobcats.  I also have terrible luck with them - in 25 years in the US I have seen precisely one Bobcat (Florida) and one Canadian Lynx (Alaska).  Cats therefore hold a powerful mystery for me and I'm quite intrigued when I see an article about them.

Jaguar photographed in Arizona (Credit Wikipedia I think)

So I saw this great L.A. Times Story today (which I wanted to share here) with video of a Jaguar in the mountains near Tucson.  We've known they were there for some time, but eh article says this is the only wild Jaguar living in the US (I doubt that's true).  Apparently the big spotted cats once ranged widely across the Southern and Southeastern US, but of course we pushed them out of most of their historical range at the point of a gun.  The cling on in Mexico, although the treatment of big carnivores was not better there than it was in the US and I'm amazed that a few manage to hang on.  The story in Arizona isn't always inspiring either - incompetent biologists (who 'accidentally' killed a Jaguar while trying to collar it), hostile landowners, etc. - but still there are a few of these magnificent creatures in our country, which means that a population survives South of the border, and that there is hope for the species in this part of its historical range.

Jaguar by John James Audubon - the background looks more SouthEastern than
SouthWestern and apparently these cats once called much of the US SouthEast
home too.

I know I'll never actually see one in the US, but somehow it feels great to know that these magnificent big cats still can find a place to live in our country.  It's also a tribute to the amazing resilience of the big cats that they can survive when we were able to wipe out the Mexican Wolves and Mexican Grizzlies that once shared the apex predator role with them in the South West.

I've had terrible luck with Jaguars in South and Central America, and have never seen one - once missing one by a heartbreaking 5 minutes in Belize - but one day, hopefully, I'll bump into one of these amazing cats.  Until then, it's enough to know that they're still around and even still hanging on in the Southwestern U.S.