MacRitchie Reservoir 03Feb09

From KH

This evening is a special one. It is an evening of forest gems. When I arrived, Con, Danny, GC and a few other photographers were already there. First and foremost were the bathing babblers - Striped Tit-babblers and Short-tailed Babblers.

Striped Tit-babblers. Short-tailed Babbler.

We were hoping that the Siberian Blue Robins would come to take a shower, like it did previously. However, they only called and I could only glimpse a female in the thick undergrowth.

There were supporting cast of Banded Woodpecker and Greater Racket-tailed Drongo.

Banded Woodpecker. Greater Racket-tailed Drongo.

While waiting for more actions, non-avian creature kept us company.

A few Branded Imperials rested on the same plant.

An exotic Common Snapping Turtle wondering what we were doing.

Then at closed to 7 pm, the Black-backed Kingfisher showed up. It would dive at roughly the same spot for fish, but the action was too fast to be captured.

However, all these pale in comparison to our very rare forest raptor - the Bat Hawk. However, as I left before the Bat Hawk showed up, I missed the chance to see this forest gem of the gems.

Here's the account from GC

Bat Hawk Sighting in Singapore
Date: 03 Feb 2009
Time: 1935H
Location: Central Catchment Nature Reserves
Weather: Partly Cloudy
Observers: Tan Gim Cheong, Danny Lau, Con Foley, Marcus Ng.

The sun had already set and a Large-tailed Nightjar was “chonking” away but we could still see a bit as it was still twilight. I was the last in the group as we were walking and I noticed, some distance away on my left, a relatively large bird flying away. I lost sight of it as it flew behind some trees. It appeared to be roughly the size of a crow and also appeared all black, so I surmise it must be a House Crow for I had seen them flying at night before. Then the bird flew across our path from left to right, disappeared from view, and reappeared a bit closer. Now, I could see that it was indeed quite a large bird. It had a stout head and neck, and it lacked the long bill of a crow. Together with its pointed wings, the bird’s silhouette strongly resembled that of the Peregrine Falcon. Its wingbeats were strong and regular. As the bird flew to our back, I said “Raptor!” and was answered “At this hour?” Subconsciously, I knew what a raptor that had pointed wings and that was active at this hour could plausibly be, but I had to get a better look to be sure, so I turned around to go after it. I could still see the bird flying against the sky and amazingly, the bird flew back towards us and as it approached, I looked at its throat area and Bingo – its white throat stood out against its dark plumage even in the dim lighting and I exclaimed “White throat! Bat Hawk”! We waited and hoped the bird would come back. After a while, the bird could be seen flying above the tree line and then it flew close enough for photographic evidence of our sighting to be gathered. Back home, upon referring to the relevant literature, I was amazed to find out that despite a small number of sightings in the last 20 years, there were no confirmed records of this species for Singapore since 1951, a break of 58 years!