Milky Stork at Chinese and Japanese Gardens, Singapore.

On 29th August, I decided to visit Chinese and Japanese Gardens of Singapore together with my nephew for the well known resident Milky Stork. Unfortunately, it's raining for the whole morning.

While waiting for the rain to stop at the entrance of the Chinese Garden, I spotted abundance of Coppersmith Barbets. The number of the barbets could be more than 10 on a single fruiting tree, it shows that the population of the barbet in the Chinese garden is very rich and healthy.

Before sunset, I saw a Milky Stork soaring around the Japanese Garden, it's an opportunity for me to challenge myself to digiscope a soaring bird. I got it at last, I learned the secret on how to digiscope a soaring bird.

I'm coming

The Milky Stork is a most majestic bird at the Japanese Garden, which intrigued me to spend an hour observing the behaviour of the bird. This individual could be part of the Breeding and Re-introduction Programme run by the Singapore National Park. It would be great if there is a pair of Milky Stork in the garden.

Milky Stork Mycteria cinerea is classified as a vulnerable species by BirdLife International. Counts from Malaysia falling consistently from over 100 individuals in 1984, to less than 10 birds in 2005. Click HERE to find out more about this species.

Let's take a closer look of the bird through these digscoped pictures.

perching on a pine tree

an adult with breeding plumage

comforting itself.

beautiful preening...

and ready for a catch...

fish?..

sunset.....

time to go home...

When the day was getting dark, I bid farewell to the stork with "sayonara, mata aimasyou (さようなら、また会いましょう)", with the hope to see the bird again in the future.

A beautiful floating Torii 鳥居 

Happy Birding..