Not previously having been keen on bird watching, i had not gone out of my way to be in a place where one could expect to see birds in the wild. Sungei Buloh, Kranji and Chek Jawa are great ... but most of the shorebirds look too much alike...very challenging but easily frustrating a budding bird watcher.
On my first visit to Bukit Brown in mid-Jan 2012, I had no idea what to expect. I had heard that it was a great place to birdwatch. I did not expect Bukit Brown to easily showcase many colourful and distinct birds and I had never expected that birding could be .... so 'in your face' easy. One gets this impression the moment one enters (and perhaps even before) you enter the old gates of the recently-remembered somewhat long-forgotten cemetary.
{The Government has plans to develop an 8-lane road through part of the cemetary. The Nature Society of Singapore has put up a position paper on the proposed development. LINK1. Local heritage groups have also raised concerns too. LINK2. LINK3}
I was amazed at the incredible variety of birdsong which hit me the moment I got out of the car. The songs of soooo many birds hits you from all direction. Babbling, chirping, twitting, tonk-tonks in crystal clear unadulterated sound. The dear departed have had it good for so long! Imagine being welcomed every morning, evening and throughout the day with birdsong! Sound pervades the air so clearly and above the din of the bi-directional Lornie traffic rush coming from the major thoroughfare just a few hundred meters away from the entrance.
I've never had the oppurtunity to see the bird called the Greater Racket-tailed Drongo in real life before. I had only seen pictures of it in books and on webpages. And it does have a fantastic name. I wondered why it was called the 'Racket'-tailed Drongo. 'Drongo' was interesting by itself....but add 'racket' to it...and one's interest peaks. The pre-fix 'Greater' adds more mystique.
The bird first caught my attention as I scanned the trees surrounding the carpark looking for any bird which would keep still at an obvious perch long enough to be recognised. There were bright flashes of yellow whizzing by... the Black-napped Orioles were out. Later, I would be fortunate to catch the bright red Banded Woodpecker having a bath in a tree hollow and hear the screeching of the Common Flameback/Goldenback woodpecker.
LINK4.
Meanwhile, the morning sun had lit some of the tall trees and a black bird stood out on a stump of a dead tree. This tree was amongst a small stand just to the right of the Bukit Brown gates as one entered. I was stationed under the shade of a huge Rain Tree (the one which i found out on a subsequent visit that had a bat hiding under the bird's nest fern on a branch) which covered a large corner of the carpark and was at least 50m away from the tree...far away enough so that the bird was not bothered by me watching it. I was a speck to the bird which was also a speck to me. Having a good pair of binos would help birdwatching. Good thing I had my camera ready.
It had a tail like no other bird I had seen (not that I'd seen many) with two long trailing 'rackets' as i now know them. One would have imagined only
Birds of Paradise having elaborate tails. Ironically, the Latin name for this unusual bird
is Dicrurus paradiseus. Singapore's own resident bird of paradise!
The first Drongo sat on the stump watching the world around it (oblivious
* of the soon-to-arrive noisy yellow machines with big claws that would signal the end of its worldly heaven in a few months' time to make way for the proposed highway).
this clip shows the first Drongo sitting quietly on the stump. It took off after a while but returned almost immediately repositioning itself. There is a slowmo segment edited in showing how the bird takes off and settles down and the movement of its unusual racket tail.
I became aware of another Drongo flying about an adjacent tree. The black of the Drongo stood out very well against the light brown of the Albizia's trunk interspersed with pale patchy spots. The bird spread out its tail against the trunk whilst resting vertical against the trunk and then started to use the sides of its bill to scrape the trunk. It did have some difficulty in maintaining its position on the vertical trunk and kept sliding downwards. It kept coming back to the same section of trunk and repeating it's efforts on different sides of the trunk.
(audio edited)
There have been a few previous reports of this activity. See these posts :
i.
http://www.besgroup.org/2007/12/01/greater-racket-tailed-drongo-following-woodpeckers/
ii.
http://www.besgroup.org/2010/04/28/woodpecker-like-feeding-behaviour-of-drongos/
iii.
http://www.besgroup.org/2010/04/12/greater-racket-tailed-drongo-perching-on-a-tree-trunk/
It definitely looked like it was scraping something off the trunk. It did not seem to be picking away on any ants or other insects on the trunk. However, I was a long way off and there could have been ants or other much smaller insects on the trunk which would have needed scraping instead of picking. The Drongo kept up its efforts for about 20 mins on different sides of the trunk before flying away.
Time : about 9 am. Mid-January 2012.
(note: the background audio in the lower clip has been edited and replaced with a recording done at the same section of forest the next weekend. At the time of the original recording, there were quite a few other people around and there was quite a bit of human chatter as well as vehicular noise which seriously interrupted the original recording. The replacing audio was captured at a more isolated spot closer to the Albizia trees the birds were in.)
Find out more about Bukit Brown :
http://www.nss.org.sg/documents/Nature%20Society's%20Position%20on%20Bukit%20Brown.pdf
http://sosbukitbrown.wordpress.com/
http://www.singaporeheritage.org/?p=985
Find out more about the Drongos :
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Racket-tailed_Drongo
- http://www.ecologyasia.com/verts/birds/drongos.htm
- http://www.besgroup.org/2011/11/25/greater-racket-tailed-drongo-calls/
- http://www.besgroup.org/2008/03/19/nests-of-greater-and-lesser-racquet-tailed-drongos/
- http://www.besgroup.org/2008/04/25/greater-racket-tailed-drongo-eating-forest-cockroach/
- http://www.besgroup.org/2008/09/20/greater-racket-tailed-drongo-catching-pareying-mantis/
- http://www.besgroup.org/2008/04/11/greater-racket-tailed-drongo-mobbing-changeable-hawk-eagle/
- http://ibc.lynxeds.com/species/greater-racket-tailed-drongo-dicrurus-paradiseus
- http://www.besgroup.org/2010/04/28/woodpecker-like-feeding-behaviour-of-drongos/
- http://www.besgroup.org/2007/12/01/greater-racket-tailed-drongo-following-woodpeckers/
- http://www.besgroup.org/2010/04/12/greater-racket-tailed-drongo-perching-on-a-tree-trunk/
- http://www.orientalbirdclub.org/publications/forktail/17pdfs/Styring-Drongo.pdf
*[For all THHGTTG fans, this reminds uncannily of Arthur Dent waking up one morning sleepily ignoring something yellow before, moments later, finding himself in the mud before the city council's contracted yellow bulldozer monster ready to demolish his house to make way for a highway. Only the city council had not known that the Vogons were themselves on their way to clear the planet for an interstellar highway. Quick grab a towel! - THHGTTG.]
