Into the Nest - bird watching at a higher level

I have always had great interests in birds, watching them fly, listening them chirp. I formally started "bird watching" about a dozen years ago, with a summary on what I observed thus far in 2009 - "See who my neighbors are".  Early on, I saw many birds, but mis-identify some, could not tell many. Later, with new apps - Google lens and SEEK, I could identify a lot more species of birds. But lack of knowledge of birds, I was like a blind man feeling an elephant, I made  ignorant conclusions from limited and fragmented observations: laughing at woodpecker pecking gutter … but that's what they do … drumming to claim territory or attracting mates; excited to see two or three nests in a tree … thought to be from different bird families ...in fact from the same northern mocking bird family -they just didn't reuse the same nest!

Reading this book "Into the Nest", I know a lot more in depth about the circle of bird's life

Looking for a mate

Bird calling is mostly for male to attract female, but like human, they need more than just singing to  attract a mate, many birds build nest together  - such as the birds I see frequently Heron, others build nest(s) first, such as blue birds, then pursuing mates. Bald Eagles are more elaborate they will sky dance and then build the nest together!

from the book Into the Nest

from the book Into the Nest

The bird chirps are not just for attracting mates, they are also used to claim and defend territory. I actually witnessed such activities from northern mocking birds first hand at the front yard of my old house in Texas: Northern mocking birds made screaming calls to house finches who were building their nest in a pine tree in the yard, away from mocking birds' nest and trees, and trying to chase them away, on the other hand house finches, playing tricks with mocking birds, and successfully evading them and built their nest, raised their family.

Building nests

Many birds build their nests in trees, such as bald eagles, which build the largest bird nests of all birds; some birds build their inside cavities in a tree, such as hornbills or woodpeckers; some others may build their nests in shallow ditches on the ground, such as killdeers. There are birds who don't build nests at all, but steal/rob other birds' nests, brown-headed cowbirds for example, 

The killdeer stood by its nest in front of it, under the steel net

Bird Biology - Mating/Laying Eggs

From reading, and some observations, e.g. ducks in the ponds, I knew that birds are mating when a male birds sit on top of female's back. But the anatomy of birds' sex organ was unknown until reading this book.

Ornithologists call bird mating "cloacal kiss", because birds' mate through cloaca,  an expandable multipurpose chambers in both sexes,  near their tails. When they mate, the female twist her tail upwards, and he turns his tail to meet hers so their cloacals meet. 

One thing I knew none about was the female birds will produce eggs (ovum) irrespective if she has mated or not, or if the eggs are fertilized or not! An egg starts to form when ovum is formed at ovarian follicles. Matured "ovum gradually makes its way along oviduct, if the sperm reaches the upper part of oviduct as the ovum passes through, the ovum maybe fertilized,  the oviduct walls first secret egg white (albumen), and then the minerals to form the shell. Finally the finished egg reaches the cloaca", and is laid. The eggs look the same whether they are fertilized or not.

egg spedition

During nesting season, most female birds ovulate once everyday or two, and lay eggs 12 to 36 hours later. Ovulation ends when the female has laid an entire clutch - the number varies by species. Some female are determinate layers, which means they only lay certain number of eggs, and stop; others are indeterminate layers, they continue to lay eggs, if eggs are removed from the nests, until the clutch number is reached. The most familiar case is the barnyard chicken, which can lay eggs indefinitely because the eggs are removed all the time!  The farmed hens are robbed of hatching chicks without knowing it.

Incubating and Hatching

Once a clutch of eggs is laid, the hen starts to brood the eggs to incubate them.  Many nesting birds develop a bare patch skin on their belly  - brood patch. A fertilized egg does not start to form embryo until the temperature reaches ~ 38C, that's why incubation is needed. Note that male bird can brood as well.

It is not the whole yolk (ovum) that develops into an embryo, it is only a small part of the surface of the yolk where tiny cells divide to form the embryo. The embryo is attached to the yolk sac at the abdomen for nutrient during hatching. It typically take 2 - 4 weeks for a bird to hatch. 

 

A very interesting phenomenon is how the chicks break egg shell to come into this world. All chicks have egg teeth on their bills. The teeth are hard and pointed. As hatching nears, chicks use their egg teeth scrape against inner shell, until a small hole is formed, upon further scraping, the hole grow into a crack, and chicks come into the world.

There are two types of hatchlings, precocial or altricial. Precocial chicks are those who can walk/follow their parents soon after. Altricial chicks who have sparse feathers, closed eyes, have to stay in nests. They are called nestlings. They are called fledglings when they can fly.

Altricial chicks totally rely on their parents for food. They look very similar like the above photo show, The parents typically swallow food they get and then regurgitate the semi-digested food to feed their young.

Fledging….parting ways … empty nests  

This is the stage I actually witnessed: observations of house finches in our front door flower basket, from incubation, hatching, nestling … to empty nest.

Bird watching

Of course I learned a few things myself during my bird watching over the last a few years. In the pat ten years I wrote about 60 blogs which involved birds. Most notably are the followings:

See who my neighbors are  

Spring Time Stories

Wildlife we saw at Yellow Stone

Hagerman Wildlife Refuge 

Birds and Flowers at Banff and Jasper

From Dawn to Dusk at Bosque del Apache 

Egrets and Mallards at Russell Creek Pond 

Dallas Bird Sanctuary 

My bird neighbors 

Bird Watching Notes

A predator over Russell Creek area

Hagerman Wildlife Refuge -Bird Watching

Pelican Point

Birds, Sunset, Moonrise at Lake Murray

Birds in winter of Russell Creek

Brown Thrasher Cottonwood and …

Fauna at Singapore Botanic Garden 

Birds outside my Windows

Long tail parakeets at Coney Island

Kingfishers at Keppel Wetland

Off the Beaten Path at Sentosa

After weekly exploration of Singapore's parks, nature reserves and attractions for over 4 months, we decided to take a break due to wet weather forecasted for the weekend of December 11. We slept in and took a leisure pace for breakfast, then the Sun shone through the cloud. It seemed it would be a beautiful day. We decided to visit Sentosa - the west end of it, Siloso area (trails, the fort, and beach).

Sentosa gateway

Parked at Imbiah lookout car park, we hiked from Imbiah trail to coast trail, then to fort Siloso.

Imbiah trail is a densely wooded, lightly paved narrow trail, with water falls, camouflaged decorations, 3.5 km loop trail. We hiked one way to continue on coastal trail .

The coastal trail is a short trail along the coast facing Keppel island, there is a secluded small beach. Following the coastal trail to the west end of Sentosa we reached Fort Siloso, a war museum, with beautiful view of the Keppel bay and Reflection towers. 

From Fort Siloso, we walked on Skywalk to Siloso beach, but access to the beach required reservation, so we walked a bit along the outskirt of the beach and retuned to Imbiah trail, and completed the loop.

At the car park, we were met by a wandering peacock!

Note - a quick literature search revealed that a pair of peacocks were introduced to Sentosa in 1980. There are about 70 peacocks/peahens(female peacock) on the island now 

banana tunnel 

water fall

sandy trail

stone columns near the costal trail 

The beach on the north side

Reflection Towers viewed from coastal trail

islets at Siloso beach - viewed from Skywalk

Reflection towers viewed from Fort Siloso

Skywalk

Flowers at a Beach Shuttle station

Return to Imbiah trail

a bush covered stone dragon on Imbiah trail

A wandering peacock (peahen to be exact!) 

Peacock

Kingfishers at Keppel Wetlands

Kingfishers are a family of small to medium-sized, brightly colored birds with most species found in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The family contains 114 species. All kingfishers have large heads, long, sharp, pointed bills, short legs, and stubby tails. They consume a wide range of prey usually caught by swooping down from a perch, noted for their spectacular dives into water. While kingfishers are usually thought to live near rivers and eat fish, many species live away from water and eat small invertebrates.  

We had seen kingfishers quite a few times before, like collared kingfisher at Fort Canning, Belted kingfisher at Lake Murray, white throated kingfisher at lower Pierce trail. But we had not seen them diving into water.

This wetland is the place at the garden that is closest to wilderness, surrounded by dense trees and bushes, with large shallow pond (i.e. wetland). There is a boardwalk on it to the south part of it, and a high pedestrian bridge over it to norther part of it. 

Keppel Wetlands at Singapore Botanic Gard

Keppel Wetlands at Sunset

There are many fauna here, such as fishes, frogs, butterflies, dragon flies, insects, occasionally monitor lizards, monkeys and many birds. The Keppel wetland at Singapore Botanic Gardens, is a place favored by some kingfishers, including common kingfisher, collared kingfisher, white throated kingfisher and stork billed kingfisher.  We went to the place frequently and got glimpses of kingfishers in the fly a couple times but did not see them clearly.

A few times I noticed photographers congregated on the boardwalk in late afternoon, around 6pm, … aimed their big lens cameras at certain direction... a quick glance in the direction we didn't see anything and moved on. One time I struck a conversation with a photographer about what he was trying to photograph … he showed me a photo of a stork billed kingfisher in the fly...beautiful, but I did not see it with my eyes.

On November 29th, we arrived at the wetland around 6pm. There was a crowd there! This time I saw this beautiful stork billed kingfisher perched on a tree branch by the water, can you see it from the following photo? It was on a side branch of the right main branch, the blue/brown/red spot in the otherwise green and grey colors was the bird. I could see it clearly by zoom in using the lens on my camera - red beak, red claws,  blue feathers, and brownish breast. 

We waited for  5+ minutes there, hopping to see it flying or diving. None happened, and we started to get mosquito/bug bites, and decided to go to the pedestrian bridge.  When we came back, the crowd was gone, apparently the kingfisher show was over :(.

Stork Billed Kingfisher at Keppel Wetland 

stork-billed kingfisher 1

stork billed kingfisher 2

Last Sunday, December 5th afternoon, we arrived at the boardwalk around 6:30pm. There was a crowd there again, we quickly spotted a tiny colorful small bird, common kingfisher, perched on the tip of a mangrove branch, looking around. This time, we decided to wait to see what the kingfisher would do, and for about 30 minutes it did not do anything except changing its posture, looking around. When we started walking away, the tiny bird started flying off its perch for short distance and back onto a different branch. It started diving after two such flights, I saw it with tiny fish in its beak one time. 

During its quick actions, I just snapped away and luckily I got one good picture of the stork billed kingfisher flying out of water after a dive!!

Wow !! It was thrilling, exciting and tremendously satisfying to watch the stork billed kingfisher in action with my own eyes.

Notes: 

1. In Britain, the word "kingfisher" normally refers to the common kingfisher.

2. The golden rules of bird watching really work - follow the crowd and be patient.

3. Even there are much better views of the birds in published photos, high quality videos of them in action, it is different to spot it on your own, and see it in your own eyes.

4. Discover and see elusive beautiful birds in your own eyes and enjoy the sights  - that's essence of bird watching. 

A common kingfisher

a common kingfisher - zoomed in

another pose

full view

rest on a different branch after a flight

after another flight

after having its first meal of the evening

emerging out of water after a dive

flying out of water after a dive - zoom in

 

Long Tail Parakeets at Coney Island

Coney Island is located northeast to Singapore and between the mainland and Pulau Ubin. This is a small island, about 2.3 km long, 0.55 km  wide, separated from mainland by a narrow channel, and connected by pedestrian bridges. It is about 1km across Johor Strait from Pulau Ubin, a likely good location to kayak to the river Sugai Teris on Pulau Ubin!

It is acclaimed to be rustic with 80 species of birds. Many people bike there. We chose to hike on the island to be more immersive in nature and have a better chance to watch birds. The trails are mostly shaded, small sandy beaches are hidden behind trees and dense bushes from hikers and bikers. We got off trails every time we spotted a beach.

The main trail is in the woods

Beaches are hidden 

 

Pulau Ubin across Johor Strait

There were wild flowers here and there, and some uniquely patterned butterflies. We heard bird chirping here and there, the only birds we could see clearly were the ubiquitous  Javan Myna. I spotted the silhouettes of parakeets over the canopies of trees.  "The resident male Baya Weavers weaving their large and intricate nests from flowering Acacia trees" as claimed by Singapore National Park website was nowhere to see. 

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Due to construction, we turned around before reaching eastern end of the island, and hiked on the southwest side of the island, from mile marker 6 on. That was when my bird watching luck changed.

I saw some movement in a tree, and looked at the direction more, and did not see anything. But a hiker behind us looked at the tree for a while after us. We returned to the spot, and saw a parakeet. It had green feathers, red beak, brownish breast.  After a minute or so, it flew away. We moved on. 

We saw more parakeets in the trees by the trail. This time the parakeets a bit different from the first one we saw. They have red beaks, green feathers but their breasts were green as well. One was eating some red fruit on bare branch, gave us perfect views of its every move! 

It held the fruit with claws of one foot, and stood on one foot. It noticed us, but continued eating at the same spot. It looked at us again, and somehow lost the remaining fruit. Another parakeet was nearby focusing on eating as well. I managed to record its actions. We were thrilled and enjoyed watching the long tailed parakeets.