Videos of Wildlife in Actions

Sightings of birds or other wildlife in actions, such as kingfishers diving for food, otter eating fishes, are not easy. I was lucky to see and record a few such actions in the first six weeks of 2022. 

I saw and took pictures of forest kingfisher, common kingfisher, stork kingfisher, and white throat kingfisher at SBG and other parks in Singapore. But mostly I saw them perching on tree branches by water, patiently waiting for prey to come by.

In January, I saw and recorded, what I believed, a forest kingfisher diving into water to catch small fish. Later in the month, we witnessed a stork kingfisher catching a pretty large red fish at Keppel wetland, but it was a bit far away from us, I did not have good pictures of its actions.

One late afternoon, while strolling around Symphony lake, we saw tiny birds with dark blue feather and orange head, perching on a directional sign, which turned out to be pacific swallows. A common bird at the garden, but they are restless, and I did not identify them before.

Since we saw smooth coated otter near echo lake at botanic garden, we saw them a few more times around the park, at symphony lake, swan lake, but we did not see them eating fishes, until this year. After seeing a large group otters swimming in swan lake, on the way home, we saw otters in the pond at Ginger garden, one otter was eating a fish, with its front paws grabbing it!

Later in January, I heard new bird chirpings by Nassim gate taxi station, looking into woods, I saw a group of banded woodpeckers! A couple days later, we saw a banded woodpecker, pecking a hole at Hampstead Wetland. 

When we visited Bishan-An Mo Kio Park, we ventured onto dike separating wetlands, and saw a large group of small birds eating flowers, they turned out to be orange cheeked waxbills. 

We saw long tailed parakeets flying over the canopy of tall trees pretty frequently. Late in January, one parakeet perched at eye level in a small tree. It posed for me for photos and flew away shortly afterward :).

The first time we saw the crimson sunbird, a beautiful tiny song bird, was at Sugei Buloh. Then we saw it again at McRitchie by trail side. Last week at Botanic Garden, I heard its beautiful chirp again, right in the bushes by the trail side. Looking into the bushes several times, I finally spotted it, and capture it on photos and video.

 

Ashy Tailorbird, is another song bird, not as beautiful as crimson sunbird, but its voice is great. Last Friday morning at Gallop extension of the Singapore Botanic Garden, we saw a male ashy tailorbird making calls at the top of a tree, and a female ashy tailorbird nearby, and they went into the woods together.

On Saturday morning, we went to Lor Halus Red Bridge and surrounding areas, I saw blue tailed bee eater at eye level, and it caught a bee in mid air! unfortunately no video this time.

Timing is everything for sighting of wildlife in action for wildlife enthusiasts like us. Our chance of seeing them increase with time since we go to outdoors regularly and on the lookout for them every time.