More Singapore Bird Park

I went to the bird park because they have a Southeast Asian Aviary. I really wanted to find out what some of the birds we saw were. I started off in the wrong direction and didn't get to the SE Asian birds till the way back.

First I saw birds that really shouldn't be here - snowy owls.


They were in cages in dark, air conditioned corridors. The picture is awful, but I want to stress how small the cages were and how bizarre it is to have these birds in tropical Singapore. You can see about 1/4 of the whole cage here. Maybe in a much larger cage, if there was some good reason to have live birds. They also had two bald eagles. It was pitiful in that cage. They sit on top of trees higher than their cage here.



While it was wonderful to see the kingfishers, you can see how small the cages are. And they weren't over any water.



The ibises and the cormorants were in larger cages, but still, these are birds that use lots of room in the wild.




The birds of paradise were in much better cages. They were full of lush green plants and spotting them was like spotting birds in the wild.


There were maybe 4 birds in this cage. It's much better than the kingfishers, but much less space than they would have in nature.


I stuck this picture in just because it was such an interesting bird. The aviary for the SE Asia birds was quite big, but it also had smaller cages all around the outer edge of the aviary. This peacock pheasant was loose in the big aviary.



I saw a number of birds we saw frequently in Chiang Mai - magpie robins, coucals (well, I didn't see it, but I was at it's cage and saw the picture), koels, bulbuls, white crowned laughing thrush, and this black naped oriole, that I only saw once in the distance. Here it was loose in the aviary.


The waterfall aviary was enormous. They say this is the highest manmade waterfall in the world - 30 meters, about 100 feet. But I thought it a little odd that they would have it full of African birds. Why take a chance on accidently releasing African birds into the tropical Singaporean environment?

Again, it's possible that one could justify this sort of show where people buy S$1 for a plastic cup full of worms to feed the birds. These are a type of starling Dianne. Not all starlings are bad.




Before leaving I sat in on the 3pm show in the amphiteater. I have to say it was breathtaking to have a great hornbill fly from near the stage to the top of the seats, just barely a foot over the heads of the audience. And back down. The back up again. Then toucans did the same, only here they stopped on an audience member's arms. There was some pro-environmental propaganda in the patter. But nothing that was terribly persuasive. Is that enough to justify doing shows like this? On the other hand, who knows if these birds are happy or not?


On another note, the park had great bathrooms. There's actually a small waterfall coming down from the eaves of the roof. Great way to pee.