Venus Drive, Mousedeer Trail. Pasir Ris Farmway 29Sep07

Venus Drive, Mousedeer Trail

Yamane was back in Singapore. Danny brought him to Venus Drive. Here's his report:

Welcome back to equatorial birding, too bad you don't have time for more. Not many migrants at Venus Drive short loop, only forest wagtail and tiger shrike. After I left your hotel, I went to Mousedeer Trail to look for flycatcher. It was very quiet for the 1st 35 minutes, no call except for a RTD. Just when I was about to leave for my car, the bird wave started with a male plain-throated sunbird, followed by crimson, striped tit babblers, orange-bellied flowerpeckers and then the female yellow rumped flycatcher turned up before being harried away by the flowerpecker. Another early migrant was an Artic warbler.

Before I left at 12 noon a troop of banded leaf monkeys came along and I was glad to spot a baby in the arm of its mother. Behind the troop was a female Asian fairy bluebird feeding on insects harassed by the swinging monkeys.

Venus drive (short loop left of wooded bridge)
1) dollarbird
2) GRTD
3) koel
4) common tailorbird
5) dark-necked tailorbird
6) yellow-vented bulbuls
7) striped tit babblers
8) long-tailed parakeets
9) black-naped oriole
10) straw-headed bulbul (H)
11) white-rumped shama (H)
12) AG starlings
13) Eurasian tree sparrows
14) common iora
15) forest wagtail
16) tiger shrike
17) house crow
18) myna
19) banded woodpecker (H)

Mousedeer trail (11am to 12noon)
20) brown-throated sunbirds
21) crimson sunbirds
22) orange-bellied flowerpeckers
23) female yellow-rumped flycatcher
24) Arctic warbler
25) cream-vented bulbul
26) pink-necked pigeons
27) female Asian fairy bluebird
28) olive-backed sunbirds
29) changeable hawk eagle
30) chestnut-winged babbler (H)

Pasir Ris Farmway

Last weekend after chauffeur duty to Changi Airport, headed to Pasir Ris Farmway with wife. Visited the various fish farms and rekindled my passion for the non-avians, more specifically the fishes. This place is great to see all types of fish, from freshwater to marine, from the largest to some of the smallest. These are some of the fishes that I managed to name:

Arapaima (agreeably the largest freshwater fish!)
Arawana
Garfish (huge!)
Koi & Goldfish
Oscar
Gourami (including giant gourami)
Flowerhorn cichlid (the out-dated 'luo-han')
Various catfish species (e.g. the huge red-tailed, armoured, etc)
Fighting fish (lots of them, ranging from a few bucks to more than a hundred!)
Black-tipped reef shark! (small one though)
Bullhead shark (similar to horn shark or Port Jackson shark)
stingray (including blue-spotted stingray)
Pufferfish
Triggerfish
Clownfish
Surgeonfish
Trunkfish
Cleaner wrasse
Angelfish & Butterflyfish
Pipefish
Tang (blue, yellow)
Ribbon eel
Frogfish (who keeps this ugly fish anyway!?)
Lionfish
Gobies

Also present was an hugh alligator snapping turtle, as well as some geese and chicken.

At the end of the Farmway is a trail into Loyang. There's a gantry that prevents cars from entering but ok to enter by foot. Didn't have a chance to go far, but heard a changeable hawk eagle.

Moving on to Halus, realized that there was a cycling event going on for both days of the weekend, so did not manage to visit the grebes.