Common Birds

Also known as the White-vented mynah, this bird was brought into Singapore around the year 1920 as a pet bird. The local javan myna population was started by escapees from the cage bird trade.

Common Mynas were common once, until the Javan Mynas came and took over, becoming the ‘common’ mynas we see in Singapore today

It is extremely adaptable in terms of food and breeding sites. It wakes up well before other birds to feast on road kills along expressways, and also feeds on insects, fruits and human food.

It can often be found walking around open-air hawker centres and canteens looking for leftover food.

Some researchers believe the aggressive bird is the cause of the decline of other bird species here, such as the Magpie robin and the common mynah.

They lay blue-coloured eggs

Finally, it is useful to note how the Myna also thrived when its biggest and baddest bully, the house crow, ended up inciting specific culling from the authorities. When its natural enemies were removed, the Javan Myna flourished in the landscape.

A town council once applied a spicy gel on tree branches in a bid to shoo off the noisy birds, but the birds simply put leaves and twigs on top of the gel and got on with life.

In 2012, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority sent a hawk to chase them away from Orchard Road, but the predator beat a hasty retreat when it came up against the sheer number of mynahs.

Since the 1990s, crows have experienced a population boom in Japan, where—not coincidentally—delicious garbage is more plentiful than ever before. This is bad news for power companies. Urban crows like to nest on electric transformers and will often use wire hangers or fiber-optic cables as building materials for their nests. The result was an epidemic of crow-caused blackouts in major cities around Japan: Between 2006 and 2008, the corvids stole almost 1400 fiber-optic cables from Tokyo power providers, and according to the Chubu electric company, crows are responsible for around 100 power failures per year in their facilities alone.

Crows are so smart and so good at improvising that some zoologists admiringly call them "feathered apes.

This avian language isn't homogeneous; two different populations of crows may have slight differences. the calls these birds use "vary regionally, like human dialects that can vary from valley to valley.

In Japan, carrion crows (Corvus corone) use cars like oversized nutcrackers. The birds have learned to take walnuts—a favorite treat—over to road intersections, where they put the hard-shelled snacks down onto the pavement. The crow then waits for a passing vehicle to smash the nut, after which it will swoop down and eat the delicious interior.

It's a risky trick, but the crows aren't usually run over because (unlike some people) they've figured out what traffic lights mean. Carrion crows wait until the light turns red before flying down to place the un-cracked nut on the road. The second the light goes green, the crow takes off to watch the nut get run over from afar

Crows are especially advanced. Like chimps, they use sticks or other plant matter to fish insects out of crevices. That alone is impressive, especially without hands, but it's just one of many tricks up their sleeves. In addition to choosing tools that are naturally well-shaped for a particular task, New Caledonian crows also manufacture tools in the wild, which is much rarer than just using found objects. This ranges from trimming the leaves off a stick to creating their own hook-shaped tools from twigs, leaves, and thorns.

Birds here are dying from encounters with an unexpected "predator".

A new study by scientists here has shown that almost a third of resident birds found dead in Singapore over a four-year period were killed because of collisions with buildings.

Asian glossy starlings and Asian emerald doves seemed exceptionally vulnerable, making up 64 out of the 104 carcasses found.

Dr Yong Ding Li from Nature Society (Singapore) said this suggests that buildings near nature areas could incorporate wildlife-friendly measures in their designs, such as reducing the use of huge glass panes which birds tend to crash into.

They frequently form large flocks, called murmurations, which may move in synchrony in order to avoid predators.

That Noisy Bird That Goes ‘Ku-oo’ Every Morning

The Asian Koel’s call is a universal Singapore experience. However, no bird chirps without purpose. The kooo-koooooo sound that the Koel makes is actually a mating call, and a desperate one. The male Koel repeats a kooo-kooooo call in search of a female, which has a comparatively more shrill sounding kik kik kik call. How often do you hear the male’s call being responded to? Without any response, all the male Koel can do is to set its call on loop, hoping for a reply.

This species is a brood parasite, depositing its eggs in the unattended nest of a host bird — usually a House Crow! The Asian Koel chick hatches before the host’s chicks and forces the remaining eggs out of the nest. This brood parasitism actually reduces the crow’s reproductive success and keeps its population in check.

She might also remove one of the crow's eggs at the same time. When the koel chick hatches, it gets taken care of by the crows, who don't realise that one of their chicks is not like the others.

The Asian Koel is known to parasitise other bird species elsewhere, while here, they've only been seen to target the House Crow (itself a non-native species in Singapore).

It is more often heard than seen, with its distinctive call awakening people in the early morning. The male Asian Koel is almost entirely black, aside from its red eyes.

The residential population, which is a well-established species in Singapore, were a result of an invasion from Indonesia as well as escape of caged birds in the 1920s.

The Black-naped oriole can be seen in green spaces such as parks and gardens and at the edge of forests. It is one of the most common bird species in Singapore and consistently makes the top 10 in the annual Singapore Bird Census.

Unfortunately, there are concerns that because of its song and colourful plumage, the Black-naped Oriole could become popular in the songbird trade in the region, which could eventually lead to increased trapping and poaching.

During courtship, the couples indulge in high-speed aerial chases, with the males chasing after the females.

The aggressive bird also frequently raids the nests of other birds, such as the Yellow-vented bulbul and Spotted dove, to feed on the eggs and nestlings.

Pigeons and doves do not have well-developed oil glands, which in other birds are used to waterproof their feathers. Instead, they have special plumes scattered throughout their body which disintegrate to produce a powder that cleans and lubricates the feathers.

Why are the males of most animal species better looking than their female counterparts? And why isn't this the case with humans?

A In many animal species, the males indeed have more ornaments. This can come, for example, in the form of exquisite colours. The ultimate reason is that males and females do not mate indiscriminately. Mates are chosen very carefully and, in most species, females choose males and not vice versa.

However, this does not explain why it is usually the females who choose. In order to understand this, we need to consider which sex invests more into offspring.

Males and females contribute the same amount of genetic material, but the females more likely to invest time and other resources into bringing up offspring. Because females invest more, they also have a stronger incentive to be choosy.

The relationship between choosiness and investment becomes clear when we look at some animal species where the males rear the offspring and therefore invest more than the females. In these species, females fight with other females over access to males and it is often the females that are more ornamented than males.

These birds are native to the Middle-East and North Africa, and were introduced here in the 1960s, probably as escapees from stocks of birds sold as food.

In 1968, just 100 were recorded near the Victoria Theatre. Today, they are one of the most common birds in Singapore, and are often found in large flocks in housing estates.

The ancestors of the common pigeon nested on sea cliff ledges. That might be why they take to the ledges of buildings with ease.

f you are concerned about pigeon droppings dirtying your laundry or other hygiene issues, it may come as a surprise to hear that it's not the birds which are causing the problem. In fact, their feeders are.

The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said that actively feeding pigeons and food litter are the main factors contributing to the growth of the pigeon population.

The main challenge are the feeders. They believe they are doing it out of compassion and kindness, and continue doing so

The authorities have also placed cameras and signs around the estate reminding residents not to feed the pigeons, Pigeon feeders in S'pore can now be fined up to S$10,000

Humans have trained rock pigeons as homing pigeons. They are able to return to the home loft if released at a location that they have never visited before and that may be up to 1000 km (620 miles) away. The rock pigeon was used in both World War I and II

The birds can do this even if they've been transported in isolation—with no visual, olfactory, or magnetic clues—while scientists rotate their cages so they don't know what direction they're traveling in. How they do this is a mystery, but people have been exploiting the pigeon's navigational skills since at least 3000 BCE, when ancient peoples would set caged pigeons free and follow them to nearby land.

As a ground-dwelling bird that looks like a domestic chicken, Singapore's endangered red junglefowl is often confused for being poultry.

You would be forgiven for thinking that the Red Junglefowl is simply a chicken that happens to be living in the wild. After all, it looks very much like a regular domestic chicken! But the Red Junglefowl is actually the ancestor of all domestic chickens.

The most interesting fact to come out of this entire episode so far is that the red junglefowl native to Singapore is the original bird that spawned all other chickens in the world.

The Red junglefowl was domesticated for human use well over 5,000 years ago. Since then, their domestic form known as chickens has spread around the world and is kept globally as a source of meat and eggs

Every variety of the chicken in the world today is descended from this single Asian species.

Unlike their domestic cousins, junglefowl are able to jump and fly for short distances.

As the males grow up, they start to compete for female attention. The lawn becomes a dojo and martial arts training ground for an adult battle. Fought with sharp spurs on their feet.

When two evenly matched males meet, the eyes lock and battle begins. Only one can win the right to mate. The loser is forced into retreat.

You can still find the original form of the red junglefowl in forests in Malaysia and Pulau Ubin, Singapore, although frequent crossbreeding with domestic stock is weakening the wild species.

In 2017, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) and National Parks Board carried out culling of the free roaming chicken found around Sin Ming and Thomson View for several reasons, including noise pollution, bird flu risk and to reduce the possible dilution of the genetic stock of purebred red junglefowls.