The weather, in the way the rainclouds sneak over the grey-green canopy, or mere weariness from the burden of dogged tasks, often compels us to spend a good hour or more in the main hide of Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve that lies just after the bridge across the big bamboo river. The benches within are just broad enough to support the flanks of an overgrown fowl and offer a tempting surface for forty winks on humid afternoons pierced by the insistent songs of cicadas. But the shrill song of the mangal is cut off whenever stomping feet and sure-footed voices invade the shelter, breaking the siesta with demands to see all the wonders of the swamp in a mere minute or two and wondering aloud at the paucity of life on a former prawn pond that lies just beyond a shorn hedge of shrubs drenched in salt.
The tawny flat creeps to a rhythm that resists the fleeting attention spans of digital natives. Thousands of snails in dark, conical shells graze on the mud, advancing with a speed that overwhelms their benthic prey but escapes the notice of both bird and man. In their apparently random grazing routes, the silt-caked potamidids skirt small pools that riddle the sediment. Some of these waterholes are guarded by giant mudskippers, aberrant fish with the heads of frogs that maintain a perimeter of comfort around their depressed territories. The amphibious gobies are permanent residents here, but some of the larger puddles serve as doubtful refugia for creatures who failed to depart when the sluice gates were opened to drain the ponds and welcome the wintering flocks.
Little egrets, resplendent in white and repugnant in voice, gather around these traps, wading in to tap their feet and flush out small fish or shrimp from a cloak of mud. With its prize in bill, the adroit hunter beats a hasty retreat to elude thieving kin, taking off for a quieter stretch where it can dip its catch in a still pool and rinse it of unsavoury grains. A handful of the two dozen or so little egrets on the prawn pond were already in breeding garb, with two long plumes draping the nape and a shawl of filaments over their back and at the base of the neck. These individuals were particularly quarrelsome, approaching other birds with heads raised to the sky to initiate mild but cackly scuffles that end with no clear victor.
Though nearly a third larger than their cousins, two intermediate egrets maintained a low profile, moving little from their positions by a seep that careened from a copse at the centre of the pond. Kingfishers and orioles could be heard from this thicket as well, and emerge on occasion to illuminate the scene with darts of gold and azure. A plain tiger floats before the hide, landing with light tarsal steps to sip from the stiff cups of flowering mangroves.
A series of repeated whistles, soft yet sonorous in their rapid intensity, announces the arrival of whimbrels, possibly from feeding grounds to the east, who descend with broad loops that circumnavigate the adjacent pond before coming to a stop on a landscape of mud and molluscs. The song of northern moors continues as waves of shorebirds, more whimbrels and melodious greenshanks, swoop in with collective intelligence to land as one unruffled body and vanish on the brown shades and grey tones of a shoal that hides hundreds of birds in plain view. The little greenshanks remain active, prowling the edges of dirty brooks, but the whimbrels soon settle in invisible formations with their backs to the drizzle and eyes on water monitors that periodically invade the flat and carve clumsy paths of sinking feet and sinuous tails.
At times, a passing raptor – an osprey, a circling kite, a hopeful falcon – would trigger an eruption of wings as the waders play safe by presenting a moving target to would-be hunters before reclaming their roost following a demonstration of individual fitness and aggregate strength. Before long, the flocks will rise and ride the updrafts, only to return two seasons later when they have raised a new generation in the sanctuary of far northern bogs. For these tropical shores, though pleasantly warm and awash with wriggling morsels, harbour too many dangers and too little space for the birds of the tundra that swarm to this old, ordinary park only to escape the barren months and endure the objection of men who see nothing by these trails but the fog of misaligned expectations.
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