For a few months now, I've been chatting with a friend over a cup of hot teh-o-siew-dai and teh-c, or the occasional kopi-o-siew-dai for me. He often shares his enthusiasm for wildlife photography - birding - in particular. Being an inquisitive person, I'm more interested to find out why my friend enjoys that pastime.
Birding is the act of observing and identifying birds in their natural habitat. A person who participates in birding is called a birder. Birders driven by their passion, would be often on a lookout for certain species of birds that catch their interest. They usually would be armed with a long-focused lense camera that resembles a rocket launcher. For the attire, long sleeve button downed shirt and pants (sometimes with camouflage patterns) and a jungle hat completes the look. In Singapore, the UV rays are intense. If you are going to be under the sun for hours, you have to cover yourself as much as possible. Not forgetting mosquitos and other creepy crawlies if you are birding in a tropical forested area with tall grass around you.
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| Image credit: Freepik |
On weekends, my birder friend visits different spots in Singapore to photograph birds. He can patiently wait for hours just to shoot a particular bird flying across the sky, diving into a lake or just roosting. To him, capturing images of birds living out their daily life in their natural habitat fascinates him.
What fascinates me, are the little birds that can fly very long distances, crossing oceans just for a pit stop in Singapore. Some of those little birds start their journey from as far away in the Himalayas or Japan. Some birds do get lost travelling long distance, instead of reaching their destination in one of our neighbouring countries up north with their flock of friends, they end up in our island country.
Once in a while, there would be a social media news of a bird found resting on the ground too tired to fly away even when approached by curious humans. It could have arrived long distance from another continent. Certainly an exhausted common Myna or a neighborhood pigeon won't be deemed social media worthy, usually the birds that get mentioned on social media with celebrity like fanfare are owls, eagles, and vultures!
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| Image credit: Freepik |
I can somewhat understand the allure of birding, why someone would spend many hours just to get a good photograph of a bird, especially a bird in flight with its wings stretched out emphasizing its majestic form, or wings tucked in with talons fully extended to pounce and grab its prey within a blink of an eye. Those images captured are gifts from nature, not scripted, not generated by artificial intelligence.
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| Image credit: Freepik |
My interactions with birds aren't the same as my birder friend. I will usually chase away the Javan Mynas or common Mynas that like to roost on my balcony because a certain Javan Myna couple made a nest in my aircon compressor and were 3 times parents! Only on their 3rd time as parents did we manage to locate and remove the well hidden nest from inside the aircon compressor, we discovered 2 baby birds! The nest and the baby birds were moved into a carton box and placed in one corner of my balcony.
The nesting materials that were curated by the Myna parents, mostly consisting of twigs and some feathers. Occasionally, new nesting material like an odd strip of cloth woven with aluminum-like material would be added to help keep the babies warm during cold windy nights or perhaps hide them from human eyes. Although I didn't quite like the parents, as they were so noisy, I was thrilled to see the babies!
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| The 2 baby birds found in my aircon compressor. Image credit: Author of Blog |
Like human babies, they slept most of the time, and woke up only to eat. Their parents, worked all day and evening to bring food to them. As they're babies, the food they bring are baby sized, such as baby lizards, baby cockroaches, and small berries. It's quite amusing when us humans and baby birds have dinner at the same time, it's like having guests for dinner. Eventually the baby birds left the nest, and we didn't want that Myna couple to make another nest in our aircon compressor. We made sure to seal up any gaps in our compressor, and placed plastic made snakes to scare away the birds. Cross my fingers, so far it works!
Listening to my friend share his birding adventures is inspiring, I envy his enthusiasm and the skills he has developed. Being able to recognise different species of birds, their calls, and taking beautiful photos of birds in flight. I would also like to live doing what I enjoy, that would be a fulfilling life 😉
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| Image credit: Freepik |
