Category Archives: History

My Singapore First Bird Records: A 16-Year Retrospective

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I have been birding for close to 16 years now. In that period of time, I have had a few Singapore first bird records; that is, being the first person to discover that particular bird species in Singapore. It’s one of the more sought-after achievements in birding, for it’s not every day you can come across a rare bird, much less be the first person ever to see the species in the country. So, naturally, I have been asked once in a while, “How many Singapore first bird records do you have?”

I can’t answer in a straightforward manner with a single number. Instead, let me tell you the individual stories behind each discovery and then give you my thoughts about them later.

1. Lesser Black-backed Gull / Taimyr Gull – Singapore Strait (20 November 2011)

Lesser Black-backed Gull at Singapore Strait

I was invited to join a pelagic boat trip with members of the Nature Society (Singapore) (NSS) Bird Group for the first time on 20 November 2011. At around 8:23 am, a medium-sized bird flew from a west to east direction, passing by our boat. I was positioned on the upper deck of the boat and saw it, getting a series of shots. Down below, the other birders also witnessed it, and another photographer, Lee Tiah Khee, photographed that bird as well. It looked like a gull, but at that time, I had no idea where to begin and deferred the ID to the other, more experienced birders. They all settled on it being a juvenile Larus gull type, but the actual ID was not easy until, upon advice from Dave Bakewell, I sent an email to Nials Moore, who is based in South Korea. Here is his reply via a blog post here (scroll down a bit).

The sighting and record was then accepted by the NSS Bird Group Records Committee (NSSBGRC) soon after, and the species was included into the new checklist. Yay! So what’s the problem? The inclusion didn’t last. A few years later, the committee changed its mind and removed the bird from the list. Apparently the exact location of the sighting became an issue as they relooked at some of the older pelagic trip records. I managed to retrieve the data from a GPS logger I had running then, and the location of the discovery is shown here.

For their part, the Bird Society of Singapore’s Records Committee (BirdSoc RC) decided to place the record on their Annex A instead of in Category A. This simply means it’s not in their main Singapore checklist either.

 

2. Red-footed Booby – Singapore Strait (13 May 2012)

Red-footed Booby at Singapore Strait

Another pelagic trip organised by NSS, and this time I moved to the front of the boat together with Lim Kim Seng. With a clear wide view of the sea ahead, we soon saw a large bird flying near a ship at around 7:06 am. I remember shouting “Bird!” to alert the rest who were seated at the back of the boat. They largely managed to see the bird, but our front views were the first and the best. The bird was following a ship named “Jin Hai Yu”. It was headed towards the Changi side while we were closer to the Pengerang, Johor side. Our exact observation location, based on my GPS logger, was here.

I don’t recall exactly whether the ID of the booby was confirmed immediately by others. I have a hazy notion that we thought it was a booby, pending my photos for an exact ID. In the end, back at home with a field guide in hand and the photo on the computer screen, it was obvious to me that it was a juvenile Red-footed Booby.

How did this sighting rate? Well, at that time, the record was considered legitimate, and we happily filed it under our respective national first achievements. However…

About a year later, Chan Yoke Meng and Melinda Chan realised a bird they had photographed on 9 February 2011 at the former Muslim Cemetery in Lim Chu Kang turned out also to be a Red-footed Booby, hence predating our sighting by a year. Their write-up can be found here.

 

3. Black-and-white Bulbul – Jelutong Tower (29 May 2012)

Black-and-white Bulbul at Jelutong Tower

A routine trip to Jelutong Tower led to the discovery of this bulbul. I have written about the circumstances of this discovery to the wildbirdSingapore Yahoo Group. You can have a read below. To summarise, I was observing a Green Leafbird perched on the bare branches at the canopy of a distant tree. It flew off, and another black bird flew in and perched on the same branch. I initially thought it was a Square-tailed Drongo-Cuckoo due to its size and small bill (hence ruling out the Crow-billed Drongo). I noticed that there was a white patch on the wing, which made me doubt the ID. I was the only observer at the tower and I don’t even recall informing anyone about it. Unfortunately, my WhatsApp message archive only extends to 2013. Back home, I processed the photo and asked around, hoping for more experienced birders to help identify it; the reply was that I had photographed a Black-and-white Bulbul, a rare bird even in Malaysia and known to be a wanderer.

Were there any controversies regarding the sighting? Firstly, there is an earlier observation made on eBird (that was for an observation on 9 October 2010 but submitted 12 years later in 2022). Secondly, in a personal conversation with the late Subaraj, he mentioned seeing this species a few times in the Central Catchment area. However, none of these observations by either party were submitted for further scrutiny and, as things stand, my record remains the first confirmed one.

Email to wildbirdSingapore Yahoo Group:

 

4. Shikra – Changi Reclaimed Land (8 November 2012)

Shikra at Changi Reclaimed Land

I have written about this in a recent blog post here. In summary, I saw a sparrowhawk while on a birding trip alone at what is now Changi Airport Terminal 5, but in the past was newly reclaimed land that was left temporarily fallow. The bird was backlit, and the resulting views and photos were not ideal. When I had a chance to process the photos after the trip, I sensed it was something out of the ordinary. Two attempts to ask for help drew answers that were incorrect. Finally, in 2021, re-examining my photo archive, I came across these photos and, at that moment, came to the self-realisation that I had managed to photograph a Shikra all those years ago.

 

5. Black-winged Flycatcher-shrike – Jelutong Tower (23 August 2013)

Black-winged Flycatcher-shrike at Jelutong Tower

On 11 February 2013, Chan Tsan Tsai and Geoff Lim encountered this species and submitted the record and photographs to NSSBGRC. Six months passed and there was no indication of it being included in the checklist. On 23 August 2013, I encountered presumably the same bird, photographed it, and submitted it to the Records Committee too. Two years later, in 2015, both our records were accepted and the bird was included in the NSS checklist. In this instance, there is little doubt that the earlier sighting was the national first and mine was the second. However, at the time, my record was more well-known; hence, this is a clarification about the sequence of events.

 

6. Sakhalin Leaf Warbler – Dairy Farm Nature Park (5 Mar 2014)

Sakhalin Leaf Warbler at Dairy Farm Nature Park

On 15 December 2013, an unusual warbler was observed by Lim Kim Keang on the trail leading from Dairy Farm Nature Park to the Bukit Timah summit. Without a good view and actual photos, the bird remained unidentified until the new year came; the first photographic evidence and sound recording ruled out the Dusky Warbler and pointed towards the Pale-legged Leaf Warbler, and there were at least two birds present.

This would have been the second record for this bird species, as there was an earlier record at Lower Peirce in 2009. Here is a copy of that record submission. This particular record was accepted and subsequently the Pale-legged Leaf Warbler was included in our checklist. I do not know how the actual deliberation went, or how the similar-looking and calling Sakhalin Leaf Warbler was excluded. Perhaps it was because it was conventional wisdom back then that there had never been a Sakhalin Leaf Warbler found in the Thai-Malay Peninsula.

Back to the birds at Dairy Farm. There was a big interest in photographing the birds when the news came out, and some minor discussion on how to actually separate the Pale-legged Leaf Warbler from the Sakhalin Leaf Warbler in the field; but like many mega-finds, interest simply moved elsewhere and the birds were generally accepted as Pale-legged Leaf Warblers. Other mega-birds, like the first Band-bellied Crake for Singapore, occupied the minds of most birders instead.

In the meantime, I had purchased an app called AudioMemos to start recording bird calls. I had thought that ever since the Arctic Warbler complex was split, there was a necessity to record bird calls for documentation as well as ID purposes. For the next three months, I made it a point to periodically climb the trail from Dairy Farm to the summit and record the repetitive high-pitched calls of the “Pale-legged Leaf Warblers”, as well as the birds up on the summit, especially the Yellow-browed Warbler which I had recently ticked. On 5 March, during one of these trips up the hill, I heard and immediately recorded what sounded very different from the normal call. I have provided a copy of the recording below:

It was an incomplete song, but not at all like the song of the Pale-legged Warbler; instead, it was very similar to the Sakhalin Leaf Warbler. I realised there and then that we had been mis-identifying the birds this while. The warblers were Sakhalin Leaf Warblers, not Pale-legged Leaf Warblers. A paper was soon published in the BirdingAsia journal about this discovery. A copy can be read here.

Seeing through the lens of a birder in 2026, it seems silly that we could have had trouble differentiating these two species, as their calls alone should have been enough to separate them. The Pale-legged Leaf Warbler’s call has a measurably higher pitch than that of the Sakhalin Leaf Warbler. However, that misses the fact that the main paper describing this pitch difference as being diagnostic was only published in 2017 and was partly based on our analysis and data gathered back in 2014. Credit goes to Dr Yong Ding Li and Assoc Prof Frank Rheindt for doing the initial sound analysis that led to this conclusion.

 

7. Bulwer’s Petrel – Singapore Strait (12 Nov 2016)

Bulwer’s Petrel at Singapore Strait

I joined a pelagic trip along the Singapore Strait organised by Adrian Silas Tay on 12 November 2016. At around noontime (12:02 pm), at this location along the Singapore Strait, I spotted a blackish bird flying low on the water and quickly informed Lau Jiasheng, who was standing next to me on the boat. We managed to track what looked like a large storm petrel but gliding more like a shearwater. The rest of the birders heard our communication and joined in tracking and photographing the bird. Unfortunately for me, I was using my secondary camera, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II, and was not used to the autofocus system; as such, I only had one in-focus shot as it flew away. Thankfully, the rest managed to get better photos. On the boat after the event, our speculation was that it was a Bulwer’s Petrel. The identification proved straighforward when our respective photos were processed and passed around to the seabird experts. There were to be two other sightings of this species around the same area in the following months (29 April 2017 and 6 May 2017 respectively), believed to be the same bird.

Facebook Public Link

 

8. Wilson’s Storm Petrel – Singapore Strait (12 May 2018)

Wilson’s Storm Petrel at Singapore Strait

I joined a pelagic boat trip organised by Martin Kennewell on 12 May 2018. At around 7:58 am, I saw Martin Kennewell and Richard Carden looking intently at a distant bird and decided to join in. I really had trouble finding the bird due to its distance; it looked like a tiny speck on the viewfinder, and it didn’t help that we were on a boat that was bobbing up and down with the waves. I had an equally difficult time trying to get the camera to focus on said bird. In the meantime, both Martin and Richard had already nailed it as a storm petrel and either both or one of them mentioned Wilson’s Storm Petrel as they saw flashes of white on the rump. I was too busy trying to lock on to the bird to pay much attention to their dialogue. In the end, I had only two very poor-quality and distant photos, but crucially, it did look like a storm petrel with a white rump.

In all likelihood, what we saw and photographed was a Wilson’s Storm Petrel, but because of the distance and with only very poor photos, we can’t conclusively rule out other storm petrels. Furthermore, the coordinates of the sighting were around here, which meant it was more likely to be in Indonesian waters. Lastly, there was another sighting of the Wilson’s Storm Petrel by Tan Kok Hui from a ferry ride to Karimun, Indonesia, from Harbourfront Centre back on 3 March 2007 that preceded ours. Both of these sightings were not assessed by the Bird Society of Singapore’s Records Committee. As a result, the Wilson’s Storm Petrel is not currently on our checklist.

 

9. Large Woodshrike – Jelutong Tower (22 October 2018)

Large Woodshrike at Jelutong Tower

It was at the start of the raptor watching season in Singapore when I decided to trek to Jelutong Tower on a Monday morning. My usual birding partner Richard White was not joining, as that’s not our usual day of the week for going to the tower. At the tower, I met fellow birders Oliver Tan and Pary Sivaraman. By 8:50 am, we spotted our first raptor thermalling up in the distance. It was a honey buzzard. We were all prepared for other raptors to soon appear as the sun began to warm the forest. At 8:53 am, as we were chatting, I noticed a medium-sized bird flying in to perch on a palm frond near the tower. My first thought was that it was a Brown Shrike. I immediately repositioned myself to get a better photo angle and started to fire off a few shots, then quickly changed my mind and blurted out “Flycatcher-shrike!”. I unfortunately blocked Pary’s view with my repositioning. Before I could get more photos, the bird started flying away and made a call as it did so. Oliver, who heard the call, blurted out “Large Woodshrike!”. I could only get some out-of-focus shots of its flight before it landed on a tree about 30-50 metres away, out of our sight. A brief encounter, but we were somewhat familiar with the species, having seen them in Malaysia, so the ID was not in doubt, even at the tower. We waited quite some time for it to reappear, but evidently, it did not.

Facebook Public Link

 

10. Fairy Pitta – Dillenia Hut (8 November 2019)

Fairy Pitta at Dillenia Hut

This is the sighting I’m most famous for. And the reason is obvious. Unlike many of the birds that I found, this one is a looker and it’s also a rather unexpected find. So the crowd that gathered after it was reported was pretty big (by pre-pandemic standards).

It was Friday, 8 November 2019, at around the peak of the migration season, when Richard White and I trekked to Jelutong Tower from the end of Rifle Range Road via the Rifle Range Link trail. It was a dark, gloomy morning. Just before 7:00 am, we crossed the lone stream and started walking towards Dillenia Hut with Richard in front. He stopped 20-30 metres in, looked through his binoculars, and told me that there was a Blue-winged Pitta in the middle of the trail. Light was very low at that moment, but I made out the shape of the pitta in my viewfinder, and it promptly hopped away! Thankfully, we quickly relocated it and I started photographing the bird. Even at 1/60s, the viewfinder and the resulting photos were pretty dark. It was 6:54 am on the EXIF data. The pitta continued slowly hopping forward towards the hut and we periodically caught glimpses of it; I felt the underparts were paler than usual, but in that lighting, it was hard to confirm. Before it jumped out of view for good very near to Dillenia Hut, I had a good glance at the upperparts of the bird again and I immediately mentioned to Richard that it was paler than the usual Blue-winged Pitta. With the lighting conditions as they were and only some quick glances and glimpses, it was hard to call it, but we were sufficiently enthused about the prospect of finding a real rarity. We decided we should immediately head towards the tower where there is phone reception, download the photo to my phone, and seek some opinions from fellow birders. By then, we were already considering the possibility of Fairy Pitta or Indian Pitta and how to differentiate these species and their respective field marks. At the tower, with better light and with access to a search engine to do some image comparison, and some quick WhatsApp message exchanges with fellow birders, we narrowed it down to Fairy Pitta. Once we were happy with that, with big smiles on our faces, we proceeded to quickly head back to Dillenia Hut. The lighting conditions improved substantially and we refound the bird and could then clearly see it was a Fairy Pitta. Without an Internet connection in the area, I resorted to old-fashioned SMS and also trekked further out, holding the phone up for marginal reception to send some WhatsApp messages to our friends. We knew we were creating history (at least from a local birding perspective) and it felt good.

Facebook Public Link

 

11. Common Swift – Jelutong Tower (9 October 2020)

Common Swift at Jelutong Tower

Most people remember 2020 as the year of the COVID pandemic. By October, we were already seeing signs of loosening of the safety measures imposed to protect the population. However, safe distancing was still the standard operating procedure and on 9 October, with masks on, both Richard White and I travelled by car to the end of Rifle Range Rd to get to the trails with the goal of reaching Jelutong Tower. We would have arrived at the tower by around 7:30 am. At the tower, we met Martin Kennewell, who had the same idea of looking for migratory birds. Just because there was a worldwide pandemic going on didn’t mean we stopped our birding adventures, especially Martin, who was still eagerly doing his annual Big Year. The sequence of events that led to our discovery of Singapore’s first Common Swift was documented in a Facebook post that I have screenshotted below. The weather wasn’t great, being cloudy and with a slight drizzle. By 9:10 am, a few Pacific Swifts started appearing and I started photographing while Richard and Martin observed using their binoculars. I was just trying to get better photographs of Pacific Swifts rather than finding something different among them. Richard and Martin, on the other hand, were scrutinising the swifts more closely and at about 9:14 am, Richard remarked that he could not see the white rump of one of the swifts. That prompted both Martin and I to closely track that particular swift and I was tasked with trying to get as many photos of the swift as possible. I did not manage to photograph the swift with a clear angle showing the actual rump, but I had sufficient photos to show other features. As the swifts moved on, we were in deep conversation about the identity of the swift. Both Martin and Richard, who grew up in the UK, had a lot of experience in seeing and identifying this species. They discussed among themselves while I mainly listened, and they mentioned they both felt that what we saw must be a Common Swift. Having none of their experience, I could only look forward to processing the photos later when I got back. Sorting through hundreds of shots of swifts, it became clear after looking at the shots of that particular swift that we had enough details to conclude that we did indeed observe and photograph the Common Swift.

Facebook Public Link

 

Discussion and Conclusions
Writing this post has been harder than expected. As much as possible, I wanted to look at my actual write-ups and thoughts soon after the sightings, rather than rely on present-day recollections of events that happened a long time ago. Old Facebook posts were hard to track down, things like Yahoo Groups no longer exist, and some of the earlier WhatsApp messages have also been truncated; I had previously lost about two years of actual phone content due to a careless mistake on my part. All this is to say I am very glad I managed to compile all this information and complement it with whatever I can remember now. Who knows what will happen 5–10 years down the line?

So, again, how many national firsts do I have?

I can confidently list the Black-and-white Bulbul, Large Woodshrike, Fairy Pitta, and Common Swift as uncontroversial picks. That’s four birds.

For the Shikra, I consider that Alex Fok’s sighting was what prompted the Shikra to be listed in the checklist, but I can still claim that I saw the first confirmed record. The reverse situation is the case of the Red-footed Booby, where my sighting was the reason it was included in the checklist but someone else’s bird was the actual first record. One could say in such cases, we’ll just share things and I get two ticks for these two birds, which I think is pretty fair. But my current thought is that if I want to claim the Shikra, I should not claim the Red-footed Booby and vice versa. I’m happy for Alex and Chan Yoke Meng/Melinda to claim their firsts too, mind you, but I think I shall only permit myself one tick. So plus one bird, which makes it five birds in total.

For the Sakhalin Leaf Warbler, the original finder is Lim Kim Keang, but it was my recording and my realisation about its identity that were pivotal in getting it into the checklist. In this case, I’ll claim this one. So that makes the total count six birds.

For the Lesser Black-backed Gull, it was initially included in the NSS checklist but subsequently removed due to the location. And it’s been placed in Annex A for the Bird Society’s checklist. I thought hard about it and decided that for now, I will not list this. The operative words are “for now”. It’s pretty galling that we get to count something as a national first and the accolades that come with it, and then get it wrested away a few years later. Such is birding, and a reminder that there are decisions that are beyond our control.

Like the gull, the Bulwer’s Petrel is also controversial as it’s not included in the NSS checklist due to the location where it was found, but it is included in the Bird Society of Singapore’s checklist. This may very well change in the future and revert to the same status as the gull. For now, I will put this as a tick. So that brings my count to seven birds.

For the Wilson’s Storm Petrel, the bird was too far for a good observation or photos to rule out other storm petrels, there was another prior sighting, and it’s not on the checklist. Simple decision. Not counted.

Lastly, for the Black-winged Flycatcher-shrike, I consider my sighting as the national second, so not counted.

In total, my answer in January 2026 is I have a total of seven national first birds, but with big caveats. I think it’s not too shabby.

How I accidentally got a national first bird record for Singapore

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In my early days of birding, I quickly took an interest in raptor watching. It helped that there was a large, predominantly grassland mixed with some casuarina trees site in Changi/Tanah Merah that had been reclaimed for future use as Terminal 5 airport. It was left to lie fallow temporarily. For a brief period of a year or so, I was able to drive in with my saloon car to look for raptors and grassland birds on my own.

One morning, on 8th November 2012, I saw what seemed to be a sparrowhawk-sized bird on a perch and took a few photos. It was heavily backlit, and I didn’t manage to see many features. I went on my merry way to look for other birds soon after, and upon returning home, I transferred six almost identical shots to my computer. They were horribly underexposed. A cursory look led me to think they were worth keeping in mind, but at that time, I had a “Big Year” to deal with and many other birds still to find.

It was over two weeks later that I went back to have a closer look at the images. I couldn’t be certain of the identification, so I posted them in a Facebook group looking for answers. Two more experienced birders mentioned Crested Goshawk which, to be fair, would be the most similar-looking bird. I did not pursue the matter further as, again, I was on a Big Year quest; my identification skills were pretty rudimentary then, and I already had a Crested Goshawk on my list.

SG BIG YEAR BIRDERS FB Group post (private)

About a year later, I founded a Facebook group called Bird Sightings. By then, I was a bit more experienced, and the group included even more seasoned birders. That bird was still in the back of my mind, and I decided to post the photo again, looking for a fresh ID. The thinking at the time was to find the closest fit, and in this case, the answer was a female Japanese Sparrowhawk. Now, let’s be clear: it was 2013, and many of us in Singapore had limited exposure to sparrowhawks and other raptors, and even less to perched ones. The reclaimed land had been closed to the public by then and opportunities to get first hand knowledge was limited. We were all learning together (and, of course, still are), and it would take another few years before some of us ventured to Thailand to study the various sparrowhawks up close and in big numbers.

Bird Sightings FB Group post (public)

Years passed, and on 21st November 2019 at Jelutong Tower, Alex Fok, a birder friend of mine, took a few shots of an interesting raptor passing by that turned out to be a Shikra. That got everyone excited, and with that record, the species was finally included in our local checklist. It had been speculated a few years prior that one could fly over, and here was solid evidence that one eventually did. Moving forward, the Shikra and its identification were things local birders needed to be aware of. I was a bit bummed because Jelutong Tower was my birding headquarters and I had missed the bird when it arrived. But life goes on, especially since a few weeks earlier, I had seen the Fairy Pitta with Richard White at nearby Dillenia Hut. That was a highly coveted bird and a first record for Singapore as well.

Finally, to bring the story to its conclusion, sometime in February 2021, I was looking through my photo archive (after someone asked me for a Common Buzzard photo I took back in 2012 at the same site) and came across the six sparrowhawk photos I had kept all those years. The intervening years had been a good learning process for everyone involved in the local raptor-watching scene, myself included. When I looked closely at those photos, I was pretty sure I had photographed a Shikra all those years ago. I immediately posted the images in two places to seek other opinions. More experienced birders confirmed the identification: I indeed had a Shikra. It was, in fact, the first photographic evidence of the species in Singapore. And it only took nine years to prove it. Better late than never!

Singapore Raptors FB Group post (private)

Postscript:
All the six photos are of almost identical pose. All the resulting processed photos were also processed slightly differently but it’s hard to recover a badly lit and shot photo, no matter how many variations in processing were undertaken.

From forum sites to Merlin Bird ID app

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I’ll like to take a different approach to this story and meander a bit first. When my daughter was born, I developed a keen interest in photographing her, eager to document her growth over the weeks, months, and years. Back in the early 2000s, capturing every moment of life with a mobile phone was not the norm. At that time, compact digital cameras were the primary means of photography. My first digital camera was a Fujifilm MX-500, which I purchased in 1998. By the time my daughter arrived, this was the camera I used to take her first few photos. However, it was outdated by then, so I quickly upgraded to a Canon Digital IXUS 400. This was a significant improvement, but as my daughter became more active, I realised I needed a better camera to capture her in action.

That’s when I upgraded to a Canon EOS 300D. A more sophisticated camera like that required actual skill, so I turned to a local forum called ClubSNAP to learn more about the technology and techniques for taking better photos. Through browsing this forum, I was introduced to the world of nature photography, particularly the stunning bird photography that was displayed in one of the subforum. I thought to myself then that one day, I would explore that genre.

Fast forward to 2010. With more time on my hands, I decided to buy a Canon EOS 7D and an EF 300mm f/4 L IS lens to start photographing butterflies and birds around my neighbourhood in Punggol. I took numerous photos of birds, but I had no idea which species they were! When starting a hobby like bird photography, one doesn’t begin with all the necessary resources in hand. Just as I had done when I bought the Canon EOS 300D for my daughter’s photos, I returned to ClubSNAP. I soon discovered that, over the intervening years, the go-to place for bird photography discussion had shifted to another forum, NaturePixels (now defunct).

Amidst all the beautiful photos and photography topics posted, there was a Bird Identification subforum where one could ask for bird identification help, and more experienced birders would respond. I made it my mission to identify all the birds I had photographed, and over the next 2-3 years, I asked numerous ID questions. One person stood out in answering them: his forum nickname was jiaolong, and he was exceptionally patient and knowledgeable. I must have asked more than 100 separate bird identification questions in total.

By November 2010, based on some forum posts about interesting rarities spotted there, I made my way up to Bukit Timah summit. I met a few fellow photographers, took more bird photos, and struck up conversations. One of them clued me in on two things. Firstly, I should explore Bidadari, which had already become a popular topic at the NaturePixels forum. Secondly, I should join a Facebook group called Birders Group. This was a revelation. I started actively participating in that group and got to know more bird photographers in real life. As I became more acquainted with people, I was invited to join my first birding-related WhatsApp chat groups.

Around the same time, I also stumbled upon another site: a Yahoo Group called wildbirdSingapore (now defunct). Yahoo Groups was an old-fashioned online discussion board/mailing list hybrid, and wildbirdSingapore was one of the boards where local birdwatchers and birders from NSS had been active since around 1999. Clunky and outdated as it was, joining and participating in this group helped me connect with birdwatchers rather than bird photographers. Interacting with this community quickly made me realise their expertise in all things related to local birds. To keep up, I began buying bird field guides and doing the hard work of learning not just how to photograph birds, but also about their identification details, their habitat, behaviour, and more.

At the end of 2011, the birdwatchers at NSS were interested in holding an official Big Year for 2012. I think they were quite surprised when a photographer joined, especially one with barely a year and a half of experience. I decided that part of my education would be to challenge and benchmark myself against these birders, so there was no shame if I performed poorly. My birding buddy See Toh joined as well. Part of the Big Year involved updating our periodic scores in a Facebook group called SG Big Year Birders. I decided to ask everyone participating in the Big Year to join a WhatsApp chat group too. Inadvertently, this catalysed a significant change in Singapore’s birding culture. While the birders were more experienced and could find and identify birds on their own, I was already deeply embedded in other WhatsApp chat groups and Facebook groups. I even created and managed a Facebook group for bird photographers called SG Birders. These groups and their participants were my eyes and ears on the ground, so I had far more information about rarities than anyone else. By sharing this information quickly in the Big Year WhatsApp chat group, common etiquette dictated that some of these initially hesitant birders began to reciprocate by sharing their own rarity sightings.

I performed very well in the Big Year 2012. In many ways, I demonstrated that a sufficiently motivated new bird photographer could excel in this endeavour, provided one is willing to think outside the box, know how to crowdsource important information, and persuade others that it’s in their best interest to share. But the first Big Year also revealed something else to me: the gap in bird-related knowledge between the average bird photographer and birdwatcher needed to narrow for the community to move forward together. I knew many bird photographers wanted to know where to find and photograph rarer birds. If only there were a place where one could discuss where the rare birds were, as well as a place where discussions about bird identification were not only welcomed but encouraged. On the birdwatcher side, they also realised their own dwindling numbers contrasted with the ever-increasing number of bird photographers, and these bird photographers served as valuable eyes and ears on the ground. In 2013, I started Bird Sightings Facebook group to bring these two groups together for what I considered a win-win situation. I thought it would be a small group, but an effective one. In retrospect, the smaller group size allowed for better communication than a larger one that now exists.

In 2016, I started the Singapore Birds Project, with one of the aims being to complement the Bird Sightings group in helping to raise the standard of knowledge about local birds. I believe both the Facebook group and the project achieved their aims. There are now many talented birders and bird photographers who are knowledgeable about birds and helpful to each other, especially to those just starting out, thanks in part to the resources provided in the past. Many are also now hybrid birdwatchers/bird photographers, so the old classifications and divisions based on the equipment used are no longer as relevant.

However, let’s take a closer look at the situation now in 2024. A new birder might still join Bird Sightings or use the Birds of Singapore website. Or they might not. Their first experience in identifying a bird might be through the Merlin Bird ID app, or by joining large Telegram groups dedicated to instant bird sightings. They may check eBird for the latest rarities and as a way to find out more information about the birds they’ve seen. Or they may still use larger WhatsApp chat groups or join Instagram to communicate and share with their community there. These newer tools, and others that will inevitably emerge, together with the affordability and improvement in cameras technology have lowered the barriers to entry into our hobby even more and that’s a good thing. The lowered barrier of entry has resulted in Singapore’s birding community becoming much more diverse. This diversity in the community is a strength. A broader range of people with different skillsets, abilities, and experience will result in a community being more adaptable to new challenges. A diverse community often comes up with better, more creative, and innovative solutions to problems, as well as to opportunities, leading to better outcomes for everyone within it. The challenge from the perspective of the community as a whole, as always, lies in organising itself to work towards common goals rather than splintering off when things don’t align perfectly.

Looking back at the changes over the past 14 years or so, it’s clear that it wasn’t just technology being replaced. The ways in which birding groups organised themselves and their members in the past no longer seem relevant, and the value proposition for joining them has diminished. If incumbent community groups become complacent or fail to adapt to evolving birding norms, it could lead to newcomers or segments of the community bypassing them and organise themselves differently. Nature abhors a vacuum, and eventually most of the community will inevitably move to those with fresh approaches and leadership.

P.S. I realise that blogs like this have seen their heyday, and most birders I know now favor Facebook posts. But I prefer this medium, where I can write without worrying about reach or likability. Peace!

Bidadari Park Revisited

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When I first took up birding in 2010, Bidadari, once a cemetery, had become a hotspot for birds and birdwatchers. It was a migrant trap that attracted a lot of migratory species of birds that stayed for a day or two, much to the delight of birdwatchers and bird photographers then. You can read more about the historical place and the birds here.

We always knew the place was slated for development even when it was at its prime.  There were proposals to save the area and even a Facebook Group that I co-moderated trying to advocate for its conservation. Though the group eventually fell into inactivity, it was once a vibrant online community with many fascinating posts about the site and its birdlife.

Returning to Bidadari, ultimately the development got the green light to proceed, but with some concession to preserve a small part that was referred to as the hillock.  Bulldozers soon arrived, and today, a new HDB estate stands where Bidadari once flourished.

On 3 September 2024, Bidadari Park which was the redevelopment of a park within the new Bidadari HDB estate was officially open to public. The hillock, likely the last remnant of Bidadari’s original vegetation, still stands. This area, affectionately dubbed “Bida Studio” by birders, was once a prime spot, with small bushes and fallen branches attracting flycatchers, cuckoos, kingfishers, and shrikes. The birds emerging from the foliage often offered great views.

I haven’t visited the new park yet, but I’ve heard that migrant birds have started to appear, and I’m eager to explore it once the crowds thin out.

New birders might wonder how the new park compares to the old Bidadari. While the green space may still serve as a migrant trap, the old and new locations share little physical overlap. Below are Google Earth images from 2014 and the latest from 2024, with a thin yellow line roughly outlining the border of the old Bidadari.

Starting the Singapore Birds Project

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Let’s begin with a little side-story from a decade ago. In 2014, on top of getting involved in another birding Big Year, I slowly got closer to the birders from the NSS Bird Group. Eventually, I helped them set up their WordPress blog, Facebook Page and a separate Facebook Group as well. It was an active period, both in birding and in things concerning birding. On the latter case, I started strategizing for NSS on how to build an online presence that served the birding community better. Engaging the community’s interest included a lot of writing birding articles on our blog, drumming up interest in and moderating the newly formed Facebook Group and Page and explaining birding best practices in person. I was everywhere and involved in many things. It was a good year and I became an improved birder and a better communicator in the end. Winning the Big Year against experienced competitors then was just the cherry on top.

By 2015, I was also invited to join the NSS Bird Group’s Records Committee and was considered part of the inner group of leaders involved in the Bird Group. But unfortunately all was not well, for reasons I’ll explain in more details one day. In the end, we parted company amicably and I gave control back to NSS members most of the assets I’ve spent my effort building. Pity that in removing my role from the WordPress site, articles I authored were no longer reflected as mine.

The entire thing was not as bad as it may sound here, as I was actually on friendly or at least polite terms with most of the NSS birders, even today. We just have different ideas on what’s the best way forward, and I did offer my suggestions on how they should proceed in finding new talents to groom for bigger roles in the future.

By the end of the year in December 2015, having some time to reflect, I felt re-energized and motivated to move forward with my own plans instead. I came out with a few ideas on how to contribute back to the birding community and one of them was to create a bird app, with an emphasis on nice bird photos provided by the local birding community itself. So I posted my thoughts in the independent Facebook Group I set up earlier called Bird Sightings.

The idea of the bird app was well received but there were more pressing matters at hand. Part of it was that we still needed to compile all the information needed for the bird app, like photos, description of the birds, habitat of the birds, it’s breeding range and all the other things that at that time were not as readily available. I thought we’ll fill in those parts first and then perhaps move into app building. So first thing first, we needed to build a website to facilitate in the writing, and in asking for contributors to actually write, and/or provide photos. I’ve actually outlined some of the process in building the site in a blog post at here.

For the content site, I persuaded my birding buddy See Toh to be the main editor and writer, and I helped contribute some write-ups as well, but my work was mainly at the back-end. I have also persuaded members of the birding community over at Bird Sightings FB group to provide great photos of some of the birds. Within days, we got something out as a start.

For reasons that I have now forgotten, my first write-up was actually posted as a page here in this blog first rather than at the new Singapore Birds Project site, so you can actually see what I wrote here unchanged from the day it was posted:

So on 4 January 2016, the project’s website was launched. It was a modest and pretty bare site, but we intended to move quickly to fill the gaps.

See Toh was great at writing the species accounts, and we very quickly filled out the outline for many of the uncommon and rare species. We cannot help but be birders looking out for rarities and hoping that our write-ups will facilitate future sightings of some of these species. Knowing that the species write-up was going well, I self-relegated my efforts to the back end of things and to figure out what information was important to fellow birders, and what was possible to do with my limited scripting knowledge and resources. In 2016, what we felt important was to provide birders that came to our pages with information about the bird species with regards to their description, how they differ or look the same as other species, where they can be found and where they came from if they are migrants, what’s their behaviour, and very importantly, clear photos of said birds to aid in visual identification.

I wanted both the Malay and Chinese name for birds included in the website, because I thought we needed to cater for some of the Chinese speaking birders among us, and I always felt an affinity to the Malay bird names being that many of the resident and common birds in South-east Asia would have been named first by the native inhabitants, and the English names were somehow less interesting. The first problem was I am Chinese illiterate! Secondly there were quite a few different Malay names of the same birds created by different field guide authors. For the former problem, thankfully there were multilingual birding list provided by IOU that was just a matter of extracting them throughs some scripting. For the Malay name, I had a friend Tou Jing Yi, who was actively compiling them and updating them to the current taxonomic treatment. His website is here.

For those thing we cannot fully provide, we provided links to other sites that could. In 2016, Oriental Bird Images (OBI) was a useful resource for bird photos, xeno-canto was important for bird calls and song, Wikipedia was important for general information about the species. In 2024, the order of importance have changed, with eBird taking over many of these needs. The challenge for the website (which is now called Birds of Singapore), is to continue to stay relevant and helpful to birders new and old. For that, a new generation of birders are charting the way forward. Oh yeah, the bird app thing? It never happened during my watch. We just took a different journey!

P.S. In writing this entry, I relied heavily on Facebook to confirm details of events. I am still a bit wary of the longevity of Facebook in terms of preserving some of these older postings. There is no guarantee that in the future things will remain as is, so I’ll try my best to write them down here in this blog.