Singapore & Australia Jan 2007

Singapore jan 2007

at the botanic gardens: yellow-vented bulbul, cattle egret, lesser treeduck, white-breasted water-hen, common kingfisher, scarlet-backed flowerpecker, black-naped oriole.We also travelled out to Sengei Buloh, which is a nature reserve based around mangrove swamps on the north coast facing Malaysia (one can hear the mosque across the strait). In the pouring rain we saw whimbrel, pacific golden plovers, little egret, redshank, greenshank, grey heron all very familiar from uk. But we also saw 3 enormous Monitor lizards, the biggest about 5 feet long! New birds were stork-billed and white-collared kingfisher.

Australia on our first day in Sydney we travelled out to the blue mountains and saw a black widow spider, masked lapwing, common bronzewing, eastern & crimson rosella, laughing kookaburra. We also heard a Lyre Bird and were played a recording of it imitating a variety of birds including a Kookaburra. A trip round the sydney botanic gardens yielded a tree full of ginormous flying foxes, australian white ibis, australian wood-duck, pacific black duck, dusky moorhen, silver gull, sulphur-crested cockatoo On to Melbourne: the botanic gardens/yarra river: Australasian Grebe, White-Faced Heron, black swan, little pied cormorant, purple swamp hen, black-faced cuckoo-shrike, grey & willy wagtail, brush wattlebird, bell miner, silvereye, common starling