The Birds outside our Windows

Our building is very close to Singapore Botanic Garden, which is about 500 meters away. It is also the tallest building in the radius of 1 kilometers. What makes our 8th floor apartment unique is that we are about the heights of the big trees surrounding our building. 

Birds fly and chirp around us daily. They are frequently heard but not seen. Especially we hear black-naped orioles chirping  right outside our bedroom windows, around 7am! 

But there are special occasions.

Black naped orioles

I open all the windows of our apartment in the early morning. I could hear the oriole(s) in the tree right outside our bedroom window  but I could not spot them until a few days ago. 

It was a beautiful morning, I heard a black naped oriole again, I leapt out of the bed and saw it right outside the window (about 10 feet away!) , pruning its feathers and made calls from time to time. It stayed there for so long I managed to record its actions on video - as one may tell the bird songs recorded were from other birds nearby, not the oriole. What a beautiful way to start a day.

Black-nape  oriole

 

This morning despite a cloudy sky, a black naped oriole stopped by again, and making calls and surveying the landscape. Its presence and songs brightened the day for us.

Note - per our observations, there are at least one pair orioles around our building, and likely a nest and more orioles.

Rainbow Lorikeets

On a rainy day in October, I heard bird chirping from many birds just outside our living room window,  thought it was from mynahs. After 10~15 minutes, they were still making noise. I went to the window and saw red dots in trees, then colorful dots, many rainbow colored birds right outside our window! they played in big trees, swoop around,  some tried to stand on the tips of tree branches and fell off ( or dove?).  Later they formed a flock circling two loops and dispersed into trees, a few minutes later they were gone. 

We spotted Lorikeets and Parakeets in Botanic Garden later, but they were so high in the trees, we could not see them as clearly as we did to watch them at the tree-top level!