When: October 2015 0830am Weather : hot 26C
Sony A55/ 70-400mm G lens
I usually bird wherever I travel to and sometimes forget that my own backyard is quite fun too…this morning after dropping my son off at the Marina Bay Financial Centre, I headed over to Gardens by the Bay, more specifically where the well known eating place, Satay by the Bay is located. I’d heard that an Oriental Pygmy Kingfisher had been spotted there….
Being a weekday, it was actually very quiet and few people were around….all the better…
View of the SIngapore Flyer from Gardens by the Bay
First bird I saw was this Sunda woodpecker in the trees by the bay…
Is that his tongue?
And just a little further along, I heard the tweets of a sunbird…and this male olive backed sunbird appeared
he perched obligingly
the throat of the olive backed sunbird looks black….until the sun catches it…then the multicoloured hues appear…
Oooh….that feels good!
this fellow then appeared from the Bay ..
and was pretty aggressive!
then a family of six otters appeared in the water and ran up into the gardens…
Alongside the Satay by the Bay complex is a long lake and I wandered over there to be greeted by a beautiful kingfisher sculpture….
Here, another male olive backed sunbird appeared…
with beautiful yellow speckling on his dark throat
Here, showing off to me!
and in a tree nearby the magpie robin sang
magpie robin
Waling along the path, there is a bridge overlooking two sides of the lake….on this side a beautiful lily pond with a fountain….
The water lilies were in every imaginable colour…here deep red…
interspersed with yellow
white
an open and shut case…
a bee also found this flower attractive
red water lily
yellow water lily
unusually orange coloured water lily
so nice, I’ll show it twice!
And moving further along back to the satay by the bay complex, this gecko appeared sunning himself
I headed back to the small lake right by the Satay by the Bay building to look for the Oriental Pygmy KF….but he was nowhere to be seen…there were some interesting lotus flowers though..
The lotus flower has broader petals than the water lily…and here we see one half opened and one past its best….revealing a yellow structure in the middle which contains its seeds/fruits
when the fruit matures, they can be eaten…each of these has many little fruits inside….
This is an interesting shot…it shows the lotus bud on the left….a fully open flower next to it and on the right, the maturing fruit pods…
The Oriental Pygmy KF did not show but this pretty Common Kingfisher did..
The actually quite uncommon Common Kingfisher
In just an hour at this delightful location, I saw a number of common but nevertheless attractive birds, some reptiles, some mammals, lots of flowers….it’s nice to stop and smell the roses sometimes!
Highly recommended!
