Singapore May 2014, Botanic Gardens

During our last visit, we birded the Botanic Gardens once, but failed to find the very tame Mangrove Pitta, which resided during that time in the Healing Gardens. Now we visited these gardens four times, but with a different target species.

This time we were searching for the Red-legged Crakes that inhabit the gardens. Apparently these gardens are one of the best places in the world to see this shy species. We searched several sites within the Botanic Gardens thoroughly, like the Eco Lake, the Foliage Garden, the Fern Garden, the Healing Garden and the area around the visitors centre, but in the end we saw only White-breasted Waterhens and no Red-legged Crakes. We saw lots of more common species though, of which Grey-headed Fish-eagle, van Hasselt's Sunbird and Large-tailed Nightjar are probably the most notable. Like in Sungei Buloh, the migrants were definitely missed. We also recorded Common Treeshrew and Plaintain Squirrel, like the last time, but this time also found a Slender Squirrel.

Pink-necked Green Pigeon (Treron vernans) (male) are very common in the Botanic Gardens

Laced Woodpecker (Picus vittatus), another common species (video made by Anna van der Kaaden)