Busy as a Bee

Today, I really understood what is meant by busy as a bee.

I was home (sick again) and I saw the bees feeding on the pretty pink flowers of the starfruit tree right outside my window. It was a beautiful sight, to see the bees buzzing from flower to flower, so I decided to take some pix. But the busy bees always fly away just when I was about to shoot, and never stayed anywhere long enough for me to get ready. In the end, after more than 20 shots, this is the only decent picture I managed to get out of my point and shoot camera.

You may think that it's scary to have lots of bees buzzing right outside your window, but the bees usually stay out of the house - except for an occasional one that get lost in the night, mistaking the lamp for the sun, and buzz around disoriented until it drops from exhaustion. Besides, they're pollinating our starfruit tree, so now we only have to wait for the tree to bear fruits.

Wake Up Call

One good thing about living a 10-minute walk away from a nature reserve is that you are close to nature. Last Friday, I was woken up at 10 minutes to eight by loud screeching. My first thought was that they were monkeys but I don't live that near to the forest. So I stuck my head out for a look. I saw 2 black birds with thick beaks. This is the second time I've seen them in my 5 years of living here. Unfortunately, my point and shoot camera only managed to capture this blur shot. The birds are simply too far away for my 3x zoom.


You can hear the screeching of the hornbills in the video below.



From my search, the closest match I found described these as Oriental Pied Hornbills, spotted nesting at Changi by the Bird Ecology Study Group (Singapore) last Wednesday.

With the constant development in Singapore, it's always good to know that there is a diversity of fauna here. Still, there is a need to protect the nature areas we have left to allow these animals to continue to breed here.