Singapore Bird Race 27-28Oct07

This year Danny, Con and I formed a team to take on the 24th Annual Bird Race. In continuation of last year's spirit, we called our team DRONGO. As what Con mentioned, even if we don't win, at least we are noisy!

The bird race consisted on 7 teams - 3 advanced and 4 novice. The winning team led by Kim Seng had 113 birds and they got the Century Award with their 100th birds at 1210 on Sun. This is considered a late time, as the 100th bird is typically counted in the morning. Also, the typical count for the top team is 130 and above. So this year is not a particularly good year for the race. The Bird of the Day was the spotted wood owl that our team saw at Dover Road.

Summary

Starting at Dairy Farm Adventure Centre at 1630 on Sat, we headed for the shorebirds at Mandai Mudflat as low tide was in an hour's time. Being the first site, we picked up a good 25 birds from here. The best birds here were 1 osprey, 3 godwits and 1 stork-billed kingfisher. Moving on to NTL2, we got another 14 birds, including a pale morph changeable hawk eagle. During the night, we ticked 3 night birds in total. One of these, the spotted wood owl, was to win us the 'Bird of the Day' trophy later on. By the end of Sat, we had 45 birds in our pocket.

On Sun the race continued, starting with Sime Forest, which got us 22 birds. The best ones had to be the shama, leafbirds and black-headed bulbuls. Next stop was Halus, which was a great disappointment with only 7 birds to offer. Nevertheless, it was nice to see the grebes, black-capped kingfisher and our only flycatcher (Asian brown). At Punggol, we got 5 more birds. Sungei Buloh gave us another 10 birds - half of them waders/tern, the other half songbirds. To get to NTL2, we passed by Murai, getting us our only munia (scaly-breasted). At NTL2, we could finally tick off the 2 terns that we missed on Sat. The rest of the day was spent more on traveling and walking then ticking birds off the list. The final birds were: 1 red-wattled lapwing from Tuas, 2 from Botanic Gardens (lesser whistling duck & Eurasian tree sparrow), 1 Tanimbar corella from Loewen Road. There was still more than 1 hour till the end of the race and we couldn't get a single tick from Bukit Batok or Dairy Farm... It was probably due to the dark sky threatening to put a wet blanket on us. And so we ended the race with 97 birds on our list, missing the century point by just 3 birds.

The sites in order of productivity were Mandai Mudflat (25), Sime Forest (22), NTL2 (18), Buloh (10), Halus (7), Punggol (5).

Sat 1630-2200

We started the day at Dairy Farm, which was the starting point of the race. At the registration room were the participants as well as the people running the show. After paying the $40 pax registration fee, we collected our 2 apples, 1 bun and 1 towel each. Just as I was collecting the package, I noticed a pied imperial pigeon laid dead in a red plastic bag. Not such a good omen for an event like this... Anyhow, the flag off went on at 1630 and off we raced. Surprisingly there was not a single tick that we could put on the list at the Adventure Centre itself - another bad omen...

The first bird on our list was none other than the white-vented myna, formerly identified as the Javan myna (and even longer ago identified as the white-vented myna...). Low tide was 1739 according to the tide tables. As Changi Cove was closed to the public, the only alternative for us was the Mandai Mudflat. And sure enough some of the teams were also here. The great ticks here were 1 osprey and 3 godwits (every tick is a good tick, so the rarer ones will be known as great ticks hereafter). Another great tick is a stork-billed kingfisher that flew-by - a bird we hardly expect to tick at this site, much less as a fly-by! 27 birds on our list just 1 hour after the flag off. Not too bad for a start I was thinking, but we all knew it was going to get tougher as the hours past.

A brief stop over at the radio towers gave us 2 more birds - 2 white-bellied sea eagles and 1 brown shrike. Another bird seen here was the osprey (actually 2 of them). 10 mins or so later, we were ticking off a few more birds at NTL2. A pale morph CHE being the great tick here. The barrier has been shited a little further in and fortunately it was open. Expecting to get the 2 species of terns here, we were left disappointed with just 3 ticks - a purple heron, the bee-eaters and the barn swallows. The expected dip here was the purple swamphen. A bird flew pass us into the reeds and it looked like an Oriental reed warbler. However, none of us had a good look to confirm its ID, hence it was not on our list. On the way out of NTL2, we picked up another 3 birds. The white-crested laughing thrushes were also calling away, but no visual contact... Fortunately, we managed to get them at Murai Farmway. A loop round the LCK cemeteries produced no new tick, but it was great to see a dark morph CHE here nonetheless.

By this time, night has fallen and we headed straight for our night birds, starting with the spotties at Dover Road. The time was 1930 and there were no sign of the spotties. Then, the soft who-ing at a distance caught our attention. Never really expecting the birds to respond, I started imitating the call. Within a minute, lo and behold, 2 spotties flew in and gave us the much desired tick! Next stop, Lower Peirce Reservoir for the buffy. No buffy here but a large-tailed nightjar was a good substitute. Con said he almost stepped on the nightjar! The final bird before we retired for a good night's rest, was a night heron in the canal beside Kranji MRT. Total count for the day: 45 birds.

Sun 0530-1630

We continued our race by carpooling at Bukit Batok Nature Park because according to our grand plan this would be our final destination for the race. Sime Forest is the site to be for the morning part of the race every year. And so there we were at Rifle Range at about a quarter to 6am. As we walked along the trail, we could hear both the collared scops and brown hawk owls calling at a distance, but we could not see them at all. Exasperated, we stopped at the cross junction for some precious minutes calling and calling until finally, Danny pointed out a brown hawk owl flying by.

Next bird was our icon - the GRT drongo. It was a truly noisy bird chattering away early in the morning. Along the way to the boardwalk we picked up another 5 birds, not such a good progress for 1/2 hour of intense searching and head-bobbing. At the boardwalk, 8 more ticks were welcomed, but these were common birds, no flycatcher yet. By the time we reached the reservoir, most of the teams were already there. We were considered late, as typically the teams will be there at daybreak. After a brief hi-bye, we were back on the boardwalk to Jelutong Tower. A great tick at the tower was a pair of leafbirds. The tower was also where we had our greatest disappointment for the race. An Aquila-like raptor perched high up on a tree a distance away spoofed us and had us thinking we got a rare raptor. Excited, we called a few of the veteran birders who were passing by up, hoping to get an ID confirmation. At this point in time, the consensus was a greater spotted eagle and that was what we wrote down as our 64th bird. We were to find out later that it was indeed a crested honey buzzard, hence our 64th bird was invalid.

Our targeted time to reach Halus was 0900, but it was 0830 and we were still at Jelutong. Doubling back to Rifle Range, we were fortunate to stumble on a fruiting tree which got us a mixed flock of 2 bulbul species - cream-vented and black-headed. The latter is particularly nice as it is not easy to see them in our forest - another great tick!

Once we reached Halus, we were looking intently for any munias or red turtle doves but to no avail. Walking in, some movement in a tree caught our attention. It was an Asian brown flycatcher (the only flycatcher on our list). The moorhen pond was quiet and not a single bird was sighted in it. Fortunately, the grebe pond never disappointed us with the grebes and we also picked up another great tick here - a black-capped kingfisher. There was still no sign of any munias, but weavers and Daurian (formerly purple-backed) starlings were good consolations. At a distance, we could see Wing Chong's team near the hill top. Looking down from the hill slope, we could see a large monitor lizard in the moorhen pond. No wonder there was no bird in it. And so we left Halus with just 7 ticks, utterly disappointed with a site that was supposed to provide a bonanza of species.

Next up was Punggol. Together in the drain were 3 waders - 1 little ringed plover, 1 wood sandpiper and 1 common sandpiper. That's 2 more ticks (we had seen the latter already). A ruddy-breasted crake saved us from having a crake-less list. Together with the pipits and long-tailed shrikes, we had a total of 5 species from Punggol. Expected dips were the snipes and painted snipes. At this point in time, we had 79 birds on our list and the time was 1115. A short calculation showed that we need 1 bird per 15 mins to get 100 birds in all. With the 'luck' we had so far, it was not very promising...

As high tide was 1130, we headed for Sungei Buloh to catch the roosting waders. We managed to squeeze out 3 birds from the carpark and boardwalk outside Buloh. From Buloh itself, we got all the targeted waders, except for the ruddy turnstones. The godwits were roosting at Hide 1C, but we had already seen them at Mandai Mudflat. The tide was so exceptionally high on Sun that a part of the pathway was flooded! The number of monitor lizards here was also astounding. They were almost everywhere and some of them were so huge. Some just lazed around along the pathway, ignoring any human who walk pass them. We were also very lucky to witness a smaller monitor attacking a giant centipede! We completed the main Buloh loop but did not get a single tick after the main hide. By now, it was lunchtime and we noted that we still missed some of the common birds. Then as if by miracle, a common tailorbird and a male scarlet-backed flowerpecker (plus a tiger shrike) appeared out of nowhere while we were eating at the Buloh cafe! Another common bird, the brown-throated sunbird, also appeared out of nowhere when we were about to leave the Buloh carpark.

Instead of heading straight for Tuas on the highway, Con had a great suggestion to drive through Murai and NTL2. By so doing, we finally got a munia (scaly-breasted) on our list as well as both the terns (little and white-winged). When we arrived at Tuas, a quick scan revealed nothing in the dry grass field and the aero-modelling guys were flying their planes over the field. This would have flushed all the birds away... Seeing that it was hopeless to even walk into it, we decided to drive along and pick up anything that stirs from the car. A lone red-wattled lapwing saved us the embarassment of coming all the way here and leaving empty-handed. That was the 95th bird at 1430 - 2 more hours to complete our target of 100.

Half an hour later, we were at the Botanic Gardens ticking away the ET sparrow and lesser whistling duck. No wanderers around. Can you imagine such a 'trash' bird as the ET sparrow is actually amongst the last few birds on our list? A short loop round Dempsey trail got us our 98th and final bird - the Tanimbar corella. The time was 1515 and we had more than an hour to complete the grand hundred. Yet, a walk round BBNP returned nothing. Not only were there no ticks, there were hardly any birds. We did see some birders though. They were none other than the Eagles, i.e. Kim Seng's team. No straw-headed bulbul, no lineated barbet, no laced woodpecker and not even a single swift for us to pick out a glossy swiftlet... Kim Seng's team did not look very happy either. We reckoned it must be the dark clouds that caused all the birds to go into hiding plus it was a hot humid afternoon. As a last burst of effort, we headed to the Dairy Farm track behind Rail Mall, but again no bird. Defeated we returned to the Adventure Centre, handed in our list and got to know that the Eagles saw the Aquila-like raptor took flight displaying the typical honey buzzard features.

As we submitted the actual copy that we wrote the bird names on, I'll try my best to reconstruct our bird list here. Although the list here contains 98 birds, the final count acceptable by the arbitrators was 97 because of the wrong naming convention of the CHB (no longer OHB, until they decide to change it back again that is).

1 White-vented myna Dairy Farm 1635
2 Cattle egret BKE 1640
3 Common pigeon Mandai Mudflat 1650
4 Asian glossy starling " "
5 House crow " "
6 Golden-bellied gerygone " "
7 Little egret " 1700
8 Grey heron " "
9 Whimbrel " "
10 Olive-backed sunbird " "
11 Collared kingfisher " "
12 White-breasted waterhen " "
13 Osprey Mandai Mudflat/Kranji 1700/1730
14 Bar-tailed godwit Mandai Mudflat/Sungei Buloh 1700/1200
15 Asian koel Mandai Mudflat 1710
16 Large-billed crow " 1715
17 Common sandpiper " "
18 Striated heron " "
19 Spotted dove " "
20 Black-naped oriole " "
21 Common myna " "
22 Lesser crested tern " "
23 Lesser sand plover " "
24 Common greenshank " "
25 Great egret " "
26 Pacific swallow " 1725
27 Stork-billed kingfisher " "
28 White-bellied sea eagle Kranji 1730
29 Brown shrike " "
30 Black-winged kite NTL2 1740
31 Common goldenback " 1745
32 Yellow-vented bulbul " "
33 Arctic warbler " "
34 Zitting cisticola " "
35 Changeable hawk eagle NTL2/CCK cemetery 1745/1845
36 Purple heron Kranji Marsh 1800
37 Blue-tailed bee-eater Kranji Marsh "
38 Barn swallow Kranji Marsh "
39 White-throated kingfisher NTL2 1815
40 Zebra dove " "
41 Lesser coucal " "
42 White-crested laughing thrush Murai Farmway 1830
43 Spotted wood owl Dover Road 1930
44 Large-tailed nightjar Lower Peirce 2030
45 Black-crowned night heron Kranji MRT canal 2200
46 Brown hawk owl Rifle Range 0630
47 Greater racket-tailed drongo " 0645
48 Olive-winged bulbul " "
49 Long-tailed parakeet " "
50 White-rumped shama " 0650
51 Orange-bellied flowerpecker " 0700
52 Crimson sunbird " "
53 Dark-necked tailorbird Boardwalk "
54 Pink-necked green pigeon " 0715
55 Striped tit babbler " "
56 Purple-throated sunbird " "
57 Blue-crowned hanging parrot " "
58 Yellow-bellied prinia " "
59 Oriental dollarbird " "
60 Ashy tailorbird " "
61 Common hill myna MacRitchie Reservoir 0730
62 Grey-rumped treeswift Boardwalk 0745
63 Blue-winged leafbird Jelutong Tower 0800
64 Crested honey buzzard " "
65 Banded woodpecker Rifle Range 0830
66 Cream-vented bulbul " 0900
67 Black-headed bulbul " "
68 Asian brown flycatcher Lor Halus 0930
69 House swift " "
70 Little grebe " "
71 Black-capped kingfisher " "
72 Baya weaver " 0945
73 Daurian starling " "
74 Brahminy kite " 1015
75 Little ringed plover Punggol 1045
76 Wood sandpiper " "
77 Ruddy-breasted crake " 1100
78 Paddyfield pipit " 1115
79 Long-tailed shrike " "
80 Swift tern Boardwalk outside Sungei Buloh 1145
81 Common iora " 1150
82 Tiger shrike Outside Sungei Buloh 1155
83 Common redshank Sungei Buloh 1200
84 Pacific golden plover " "
85 Marsh sandpiper " "
86 Curlew sandpiper " "
87 Common tailorbird " 1255
88 Scarlet-backed flowerpecker " "
89 Brown-throated sunbird Outside Sungei Buloh 1320
90 Scaly-breasted munia Murai Farmway 1335
91 Red turtle dove NTL2 1350
92 Little tern Kranji Marsh 1400
93 White-winged tern " "
94 Yellow-billed egret " "
95 Red-wattled lapwing Tuas 1430
96 Eurasian tree sparrow Botanic Gardens 1500
97 Lesser whistling duck " "
98 Tanimbar corella Loewen Road 1515