Pulau Punggol, Halus, SBWR 28Dec13

From JS

Welcoming Kok Hui back from Down Under, we headed over to Pulau Punggol in the morning (not early enough as See Toh arrived before us) to find the Lanceolated Warbler. Unfortunately, Kok Hui, my father and I were only able to obtain brief views of this singing skulker while Con would need to come back another day to get his lifer. In any case, this season is proving to be good for this species. We noted at least 3 singing individuals. For future attempts, it is advisable to be there as early as possible to catch the bird singing in the short, less dense trees and to bring as many different recordings of its song to keep the bird singing. Besides seeing the Lanceolated Warbler, we enjoyed views of two Booted Eagles (1 dark morph 6-fingers and 1 rufous morph 5-fingers individuals). It is comforting to know that Pulau Punggol still had the conditions to attract the migrant raptors and the rarities.

With the sun nearly above us, we dropped by our new raptor site, the bridge at Lr Halus, to wait for the thermaling raptor. During our stay, we saw a single Oriental Honey-buzzard and a female subadult Chinese Sparrowhawk. I guess this site is only good for observing cross-island raptor movement. Oh well...

Lunch was a straightforward affair but choosing the site for the afternoon birding wasn't. Besides the Pied Cuckoo and Lanceolated Warbler, there wasn't any other interesting birds to look for. Since our birding could have ended then, we decided to pay SBWR a visit. Even if there are no birds to entertain us, we could always admire the amusing development. I am really interested to find out how did a site that used to have so many waders become a site that had only 1 PGP, 3 Marsh Sandpiper, several Common Sandpipers, hundreds of Common Redshanks and a century of Whimbrels? It took us almost an hour of walking before we saw something that looked different from the Common Redshanks. Sigh... The development could be Nparks' long term strategy but it doesn't look all that rosy. Some glimmer of hope came in the form of a Bar-tailed Godwit, a wintering Grey-Tailed Tattler and a Terek Sandpiper. While SBWR is celebrating its new find, a Brown Hawk Owl, we were simply chasing after any birds that we could get our bins on. On hindsight, I was quite desperate. I tried to turn every Arctic Warbler into something else - to no avail. Just when it seems that SBWR was as miserable as the weather, we found another warbler and this may be a real deal, a Kamchatka Leaf Warbler.

Worn Kamchatka Leaf Warbler - confirmed by call.

Non-breeding Grey-tailed Tattler

Summary of raptors seen on 28/12/13:

Pulau Punggol
1) White-Bellied Sea-eagle (2)
2) Changeable Hawk-eagle (1)
3) Black-winged Kite (2)
4) Brahminy Kite (2)
5) Black Baza (3)
6) Booted Eagle (2)
7) Chinese Sparrowhawk (1)

Lr Halus
1) Changeable Hawk-eagle (1)
2) Oriental Honey-buzzard (1)
3) Chinese Sparrowhawk (1)
4) Brahminy Kite (>2)
5) White-Bellied Sea-eagle (2)

SLE
1) Oriental Honey-buzzard (1)
2) Brahminy Kite (1)

SBWR
1) White-Bellied Sea-eagle (4)
2) Accipiter sp. (1)