This afternoon I met a few local birders for the Asian Waterfowl Census. We were assigned a small loop so we had plenty of time for extra-curricular birding and photography (digiscoping in my case).
The first lifer for me was this Yellow Bittern:
It seems that the Herons and Bitterns here are much more tame than those in North America allowing me to get some digiscoped photos that I'm quite happy with!
Striated Heron (aka. Little Heron):
Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker (aka Sex Bomb):
This little guy is only slightly bigger than a Hummingbird and was hopping around a tree before the count began. Another birder pointed out the bird to me without any expression - I was expecting a boring brown bird but was shocked to see a flaming red back contrasting with the blue all with this huge (relative) berry in its beak!
Collared Kingfishers are equally as beautiful but they lose their appeal by being too common:
Near the end of the day we came across a distant flock of Little Egrets foraging for food. One bird stood out with a slightly different coloured bill. Once it started walking I could see that its legs were also a greenish/yellow colour. I did think the head looked a little more round than the nearby Little Egrets but that wasn't always obvious. As of now I'm thinking it's a Chinese Egret but considering that the bird is pretty uncommon for Singapore we didn't want to make the call. If you have any thoughts please let me know!
Click on the photos to see a larger version (it's the bird in the back for both of these photos):
Yellow Bittern again:
Grey Heron:
A photo of one of the two Gray-headed Fish Eagles from today:
