Friday, February 29, 2008

Bird watching alone: a different perspective

Thursday, 28 Feb 08
Weather: Sunny
Line transect for bird watching from PGP to CDTL

List of birds spotted:
1. Swiftlets
2. White-vented Myna (seems to be mating season for them!)
3. Dollarbird
4. 2 Greater Racket-tailed Drongo
5. Brahminy Kite
6. Sunbirds
7. Cockatoo
8. Black-naped Oriole
9. Swifts
10. Asian Koel
11. 2 Blue-tailed Bee-eater on the same tree as yesterday!
12. Yellow-vented Bulbul
13. Laced Woodpecker (in Tiup tiup plot 1)
14. Black Drongo (in Tiup tiup plot 1)

A bat was also seen near House 5 although I have no idea what species it belonged to.

Some things that I took note of was that there was a certain partition as to what birds would be found in what area, even though this is a really small forest area. For example, the Yellow-vented Bulbuls are consistently found to be nearer CDTL and S2, unlikely to be found in the area behind NUH and PGP. This suggests a kind of niche even in such a small area, whereby different birds feed on different flowers or fruits of trees and hence found only where the trees are planted on.

However, this is just a preliminary observation that is based on a week's bird-watching and should not be conclusive until further experiments or studies are being carried out.

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