 wetlandsa publication of Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve |
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13 No 3 Is that a crocodile or a monitor lizard? Special projects to Understand Nature (SUN Club) Dragonflies and Damselflies of Sungei Buloh The Kranji Countryside: Singapore's very own countryside Migration monitoring at Prince Edward Point BIrd Observatory, Ontario, Canada Selai Endau Rompin Johor National Park A feathered friend from Thailand |
 Thursday
12 Oct 06, 2:30pmWeather: Humid and hazy - not friendly at all. I went about my usual routine doing shorebird counts with my trusted Swarowski binoculars. While counting the different species and myriad numbers of shorebirds, I noticed a bird that looked different. It had a colour flag that \did not look like the usual colours of green over white – the colours that Singapore and Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve use to flag its migratory shorebirds. Instead it was black over green! Thinking that the white flag may somehow have turned black due perhaps to discolouration, I wondered who might have flagged the bird with the colours upside down. Comparing the colours with the other redshanks, I noticed that the white flags were only slightly discoloured with tinges of light brown. However, the flag of this bird I spotted was totally black! There was even a ring on its left tibia. We, on the other hand, ring our birds on the tarsus. By then I was convinced that we did not ring this bird. The first person I informed about my finding was my “Guru” Krish. Within minutes he was there together with Linda, James and Jeremy. Jeremy took photos of the Common Redshank. When he zoomed in to one of the photos, he spotted the lettering THAI engraved on the ring. I was elated to know this bird was flagged in another country. A few days later, James called the Thai representative for verification and confirmed that the Common Redshank was most likely flagged in the inner Gulf of Thailand, at Laem Phak Bia, Ban Laem District. Editor’s note: Colour flags are easily visible with binoculars and allow us to track the shorebirds without having to catch them. In addition, any observer can contribute to the body of information by reporting shorebird colour flag sightings to us at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve. This information aids in the protection of shorebirds by tracing the migration pathway in which the birds are coming from and going to. |
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