Singapore March 2014, Chinese Gardens

After having found out that the first ever record of Band-bellied Crake for Singapore that was found a week earlier, was still lingering in the Zodiac Garden of the Chinese Garden, the choice for the next birding site in Singapore was easily made. The Chinese gardens don´t have authentic mangroves like Pasir Ris or any other authentic habitat but there is hardly any authentic nature left in Singapore anyway. Luckily they are also easy to visit using the public transport. Just take the East-West MRT line (the green one) to the MRT station "Chinese Gardens". Similar to Pasir Ris you don´t need to pay entrance fees to the park, but at least during te week there are a lot of school groups visiting the gardens.

It took some time before we found the Zodiac Garden, but once we found them it took little time before we located the Band-bellied Crake in the little stream running through the garden. It was not shy at all and even approached us up to two meters at a certain moment. Of course we looked at other birds as well. We observed similar resident birds as in Pasir Ris, but also got some good looks at several escapees from the Singapores zoo´s: Milky and Painted Storks and Spot-billed Pelicans as they were flying over. Again, as in Paser Ris, we also saw a fair share of migrants in the Chinese Gardens (next to the Crake of course). They included a possible Pin-tailed Snipe, a possible Swinhoe´s Snipe (for pictures of these two identification challenges see below. The suggestion which one is which is based on the length of the tail, the long-tailed one being the Swinhoe´s and the short-tailed one being the Pin-tailed. Common Snipe could be excluded because of the head-pattern, barred greater wing-coverts and the lack of a broad white trailing-edge), Asian Brown Flycatcher, Blue-tailed Bee-eater and Brown Shrike amongst others. In total we saw more than 40 species in the Chinese Gardens.

Band-bellied Crake (Porzana paykullii)

Possible Swinhoe´s Snipe (Gallinago megala) 

Possible Swinhoe´s Snipe (Gallinago megala) 

Possible Pin-tailed Snipe (Gallinago stenura) 

Possible Pin-tailed Snipe (Gallinago stenura)