My Contribution To The 2016 MY Garden Birdwatch Survey

The yearly MY Garden Birdwatch Survey was held this year on the 4th and 5th June 2016. You will find my count results below, which I carried out on Saturday 4th June 2016, between 3:00 PM till 3:30 PM. As in previous years, my counting was done at my home.

Different species of birds seems to appear as different hours. As a consequence, some birds were not counted even though they were seen outside the time bracket of my survey. But I got a surprise though this year: two White-throated Kingfishers made an appearance while I was doing my count. A rather common bird in my neighbourhood but this is actually the first time that they are included in my survey results. They have been quite elusive previously.

We had quite a severe hot and dry weather during the second quarter of this year. Never in my life had I experienced such weather extremes, culminating in heat-waves at times. Some lakes and rivers dried-up and water levels at some dams went down to a critical stage. I wonder if this unusual and unprecedented weather had had any impact on the bird population nationwide? I just can't wait for the results to be released to find out. That's about 2 months away.

My Bird Count Results

Bird Name Count 1. Asian Glossy Starling 0 2. Olive-backed Sunbird 0 3. Common Myna 0 4. Common Tailorbird 1 5. Eurasian Tree Sparrow 7 6. Jungle Myna 0 7. Oriental Magpie 1 8. Rock Pigeon 12 9. Spotted Dove 0 10. White-throated Kingfisher 2 11. Yellow-vented Bulbul 0 12. Zebra Dove 2

The Last 12 Months

These are some of the birding events that I observed during the last 12 months around my house that I think is worth documenting:

• Bee-eaters, both Chestnut-headed and Blue-tailed, continued to make regular appearance at most evenings in my neighbourhood. Flock size ranges from about 10 to 15 when they fly overhead. They do drop by my garden sometimes - on a few occasions in the mornings too. Their flying direction is always the same in the evenings: from West (where there is an open field with large tall trees, which I presume is where they were before flying overhead) to East. I just love seeing them in flight: a few wing flaps followed by a graceful glide before repeating the whole thing again.

• Quite a number of Cattle Egrets were seen around the Canning Garden and Ipoh Garden housing estates between April and May. Some were even spotted around my neighbourhood but non paid me a visit. The closest that one got to was about 50 meters away. This, I think, is a bit unusual as I have never seen them before on land in previous years at these places. I wonder if this has anything to do with the extreme hot weather that I mentioned above.

• A pair of Brahminy Kites decided to take residence in my neighbourhood sometime around November 2015. They can be seen flying about in mosts mornings and evenings at just above the tree top level during this time. They finally left around May 2016. I counted about 5 Spotted Doves in November 2015 but yesterday I can only see 2. I wonder if the Brahminy Kites has anything to do with this population drop.

• Not that many Asian Koel this year when compare to 2015. I didn't take note but I think they left quite early too. They were still around in the month of June last year.