Hampstead wetland park is a tiny park near lower Seletar reservoir, with a small pond; there are many species of birds there. One can walk around the park in 10 minutes. Some people call it the "hidden gem" of Singapore because not many people know about the neat park.
I first visited this park in January 2022, and loved it right away.
The snag trees in the pond, plants, dense wood around it, made it a paradise for birds. Many beautiful birds were flying around or rest on tree branches: collared kingfishers, red breasted parakeets, banded woodpeckers, and blue tailed bee eaters among others.
A grand egret flew over without stopping at the pond. In fact I never see an egret or heron standing at the water's edge of the pond at Hampstead wetland. It could be that there were monitor lizards in the pond.
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| Hampstead wetlands |
The blue tailed bee eaters were most colorful of them all, and they flew around regularly. However the banded woodpecker stole the show that day in 2022. When I was busy taking pictures of birds around the pond, a banded woodpecker flew in, and started to peck a hole on the snag tree in the pond. After taking a few pictures of the woodpecker, I recorded a few seconds of it pecking at the hole.
It was really cute to see the woodpecker pecking diligently - peck, pause like it was thinking and peck again ...
A blue tailed bee eater flew into the view and perched on a lower branch of the snag tree.
There were also birds on land - a pair of Asian glossy starlings resting on top of a tree across the pond, a female olive backed sunbird building a nest on a tree on the side I stood. There were also black napped oriole, yellow vented bulbuls.
With so many birds around, there was a sizable crowd of photographers there.
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| Asian Glossy Staring |
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| an olive backed Sunbirds building a nest on a tree on land |
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| a black napped oriole |
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| yellow vented bulbul |
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| photographers at Hampstead woodlands |
Since then I visited the park a few more times.
The second time was about two years later (December 2023). Similar types of birds, but this time I had a powerful tele lens with me for taking more close up photos. Also there were many more blue tailed bee eaters there. I took some very good burst shoots of blue tailed bee eaters taking off or landing on their perches.
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| Blue tailed bee eaters eat bees, and other insects, such as moths |
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| hot real estate ! |
Lucky for us that day, there were two owls on a big tree by the pond. This was the first time we saw owls outside Sugei Bluoh in person.
Later (Oct 2024) we planed to visit Hampstead again. Somehow I decided to check Hampstead wetlands' status on Google map. To my surprise, there was a review which described the dire situation at the wetlands - " dried water body, disappearance of lily leaves and almost a couple snag trees have fallen. No birds in sight and no fishes ether". We did not visit the park that day. But I thought I need to do something. I wrote to National Park Service about the situation with screen captures of the review, and asked if they could do anything to save the wetlands. To my pleasant surprise, the park service wrote back a week later - they sent inspectors over to check the park, and explained that the dried up pond was due to natural process, and so was the fallen snag trees. They told me that the park was almost back to normal, and encouraged me to visit there again.
The third time I visited there was 3 weeks ago, the wetland was almost back to normal , the fallen snag tree was in the pond - true to the practice of letting nature takes its course, Lily flowers were blooming, birds were chirping, and a monitor lizard was swimming, turtles rested lazily on rocks, and best of all I took a perfect photo of a blue tailed bee eater.
there is a good French restaurant, 5 by Sans-Façon, nearby, where we had lunch after our first visit to Hampstead Wetlands
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