Many Facets of West Coast Park

West coast park is a little brother to the much larger, more popular east coast park. It is located at the southwest Singapore, on the shoreline facing the giant harbor, PSA Pasir Panjang Terminal, and  Singapore Multipurpose terminal.

The Ships and Giant Industrial Equipment

When we got to the shoreline at west coast park, the boats, ships, huge cranes, and many other industrial structures filled our eyes.

harbor terminal right outside the park

The Birds

As we were looking at the man made structures, a big bird swoop in and landed in a tree by the pier. It tuned out to be a striated heron. It was so close to me, I could see the pattern on its feathers through camera. As we walked along the shore we saw a hawk flying overhead, with a flock of crows chasing it. Lily saw the hawk diving into water, supposedly catching fish. 

We also saw a couple of small birds sitting atop of trees by the marsh garden, and a pink-necked green pigeon in the sea of green leaves.  

Then we saw a humming bird or sunbird, suspended in the air with its wings rapidly flapping near car park #2, drinking nectar from a flower,  unfortunately I did not catch it on my camera. I did mange to caught a tiny song bird on camera while it was chirping, presumably, Bell Miner, according to Google lens. 

In the Car Park #1 area, by the ponds, I heard rattling like bird chirping, and we saw a blue feathered kingfisher in the flight over the pound, and landed in a palm tree. 

This seems to be a good place for bird watching and photographing since there were quite a few photographers wandering around with large lenses. 

striated heron

pink-necked green pigeon

Bell Miner - it is smaller than the tree leaf!

The Monkeys

By now, sighting of Monkeys, the long-tailed macaques,  in Singapore, is so frequent, it is not anything special any more. What was special today was that we witnessed a baby Monkey overcome obstacles by trying its own approach first, and followed its parents' example later. 

The monkey parents got over the top of a bridge by jumping from a metal rail. The baby monkey did not follow its parents, but trying to climb from under the overhang, like climbing a tree. After three failed attempts, it followed its parents' example, by jumping from the rail and reunited with its mom.

The Cannon Ball Trees

We saw cannon ball trees many time before at Fort Canning Park. What was unique here at west coast park was that, there are many cannon ball trees, and quite a few of them have many cannon balls, compared to none or only one cannon ball from cannon ball trees at Fort Canning areas with many fallen flowers. I guess that there were animals eating the flowers or small cannon balls at Fort Canning - so we rarely saw many cannonballs from one cannonball tree.

cannonball tree

Barringtonia 

crepe jasmine

This is a relative small park, but it has very large playground near car park #1. Sustained breeze from the sea along with the grand lawn, make it a good place to fly kites as well.