Birds, birds and more birds

The following day we decided to go to Jurong Bird Park. Frank had been before when he was working in Singapore and he said that the 30m man made waterfall completely enclosed in one of the enclosures was quite impressive.

I had mixed feelings because although I love birds I've never really been a fan of birds confined to small enclosures. Although there are still some older-style small enclosures the bulk of the birds have quite large aviaries with plenty of room to build nests and fly around (and hide away) in. It appeared that the resident flock of pelicans (all 8 species) were mostly free-flying, there only appeared to be one or two birds with clipped wings. Perhaps they just know when they are on to a good thing.

They have over 800 species of bird and about 30 of those are on the endangered list. They have lots of talks and bird displays and each one includes a strong conservation message. Frank says that the park has improved quite a lot since his last visit and so I guess a fair amount of the gate take goes to maintaining and improving the facilities.

While one of the bird shows was quite amusing the funniest thing of the day was a young Indian guy who was obviously being trained by a fellow worker (pictured below) to give the Toucan talk. He was wearing a mike and she would whisper the occasional word to him as encouragement. He appeared to be doing quite well but was obviously a bit more nervous than he looked as when he got towards the end there was a sudden look of panic and he blurted out "Oh shit, what comes next?" Obviously forgot about the microphone - Frank and I thought it was hilarious.

There is a beautiful big walk-through aviary for the lorikeets (there are two Palm Cockatoos in there as well apparently but we only saw one). It's very high and the birds seem to enjoy investigating the visitors as much as the visitors enjoy the birds.

They really had some magnificent birds and they all appeared to be in good health and well-cared for. Every enclosure was spotlessly clean. The only exhibit I really didn't like was the "World of Darkness" - I felt sorry for the owls and wondered if they ever got to fly around outside.