Our visit to Jurong Bird Park was hot and steamy, but very rewarding in seeing some beautiful birds.
Jurong Bird Park is a world-famous bird zoo where there are specimens of magnificent bird life from around the world, including a flock of around one thousand flamingos. There are over 25 endangered species. It is currently the world’s largest bird park in terms of number of birds – there are 5,000 birds of 380 species in the park.
The park has a number of free flight aviaries, which allows you to get right next to many species of birds. But even in their normal non-free flight enclosures, you can still get pretty close to them.There were a few aviaries that seemed empty, but with a bit of patience and a long look, we could eventually find the bird on display. However, I was disappointed that many of the aviaries that held some of the most colourful birds like the parrots, hornbills and toucans had enclosures made of heavy wire. It would have been so much nicer to have been able to walk around a big aviary to watch (and photograph) these birds.
The largest aviary is the African Waterfall Aviary and I was able to see many of the birds that I saw on my trip to Kenya last year. Another highlight is the Lory Loft, which features many colourful, friendly Lories that could easily be attracted to land on your shoulders with little pots of feeding nectar. It was really interesting to see people getting excited about seeing the Rainbow Lorikeets – the same birds that have visting our front garden!
I did find it a little ironic that here, right oin the equator, I could see the same King Penguins that I’m looking forward to seeing on my second trip to Antarctica next February. I could even see puffins that we searched so hard to find, without success, on our trip to Scotland.
Here’s a small sample of some of the birds that we saw.
What magnificent colour and beauty. It looks as though you had a field day with your camera Bruce.