9 september 2006

Ben asked me to go SBNR yest for birdwatching...refused.... refused to tear away fr Caleb....but finally couldn't resist it when Kym suggested we go together....

Kym & I made a big (gigantic, actually) boo-boo when we happily cried there's an egret perched on the observation tower opp the main ob deck....Harry pointed out it was actually to point direction....

But of course I was not daunted ..... the first birds were good.... 2 flame-backed woodpeckers chasing each other, a huge dollar bird ( tho they are not supp to be, but they are cute), a huge pink-necked green pigeon (everything seems so big here). And Ben has reported seeing:
PGP (stumped me when I first heard this.... it's the Pacific Golden Plover - we saw 1 chasing another playing on a very small strip of land - round and round), Curlew Sandpiper, bar tailed godwit, ruddy turnstone, green & redshank, terek sandpiper, asian dowitcher (which ben returned to sight the following Monday)......


......all names I've never heard before... migratory birds on stopover (for refuel) to Australia in early Sept & will be back in S'pore in March to fly northwards home sweet home....

But we (actually Kym & Harry) discovered the lesser sandpiper, a cute (Kym & mine fav term for birds we like) cream-&- white wader, which Kym had deciphered from a crowd of waders. I had lost interest by then. The 10x bino wasn't clear enough to distinguish the difference in mottled print which distinguish sandpiper fr redshank) and I felt giddy from staring into it too long....still waiting to buy my ed50.... and the herd of waders just look like the homogeneous crowd of buffaloes crossing the Serengeti into the Masai Mara, no? and there were 5 dogs from a herd led by a matriach ... to pose as the African wild dogs on the African plains.... picture perfect....


But Kym was undaunted and I saw what a serious birder should be like - eyes trained on the bird, describing the colours on every part (first time I heard the word 'supercilium') , referring to the Bible of birdwatchers here (Craig Robson's birds of SEA), distinguishing between brown and shades of rufous, describing the legs and beak.... until Siew Kuang (heard that Bing Wern was also there) chanced upon us and gave us the 'model answer'....

.... all the while when I was busy eating the seaweed K gave me - not the usual one but very crispy, made in Thailand.... but forgot the name. Will CIO in Watson's....

Anyway, we also spotted animals which are easier on the eyes - jumping fishes... lotsa them! Traced them to 2 otters (big fat ones, more well-fed than those in the zoo!). Joked with K we should change the signboard on croc to otters). Also: big monitor lizard (taller than me if I were to lie down), narrowly missed a paradise tree snake which SK spotted, ironically in a shed with a pic of it painted nicely...we ran in search but it has long slithered away.... end to K's effort the whole morning looking for snakes...

..... anyway when we returned to the main ob deck, we were thrilled to see the egret on the tower was no longer there, thought we had been right the first time round - until Harry pointed out to us it's looking at the other way.....

Boo-boo #2......