Monday 11 November 2013

A Type of Pawsome Scribbles (with no offense to the Blobfish intended)

I am going to temporarily usurp the Blobfish's position as Pawsome Scribbles creator. Sorry, Blobfish! Fine, it's not exactly a Pawsome Scribbles. But it's what passes as one in my world. And it's not exactly funny either. But who cares. You have been deprived of Pawsome Scribbles long enough and a Pawsome Scribble-ish thing is what you shall get. Don't call it a Pawsome Scribbles if you don't want to, as it isn't even Sunday. Whatever.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Be satisfied with it. It's all you're going to get.
Anyways, un-Pawsome Scribbles aside, where on earth did I see that absolutely stupendously mag-NEE-ficent bird? And take that wonderful picture that most certainly deserves to go on the cover of National Geographic, at the very minimum? At a place that is facing imminent destruction. And of a bird that might never visit Singapore again. In other words: a Blue-Winged Pitta at Bidadari. 
What is Bidadari? Well, it's a tiny patch of forest in the midst of Singapore that just happens to be the place every single migrant visits. And I'm talking ever. Single. One. You can see everything there: flycatchers, drongos, pittas, owls, sparrowhawks, eagles, woodpeckers, orioles, cuckoos, hawk-cuckoos, drongo-cuckoos- and that's just off the top of my head. I visited over the weekend on a birding expedition and was not disappointed. I saw... a lot. But not everything I mentioned. But the highlight, most definitely, was the pitta.
Bidadari is like a zoo. With so many birders around you barely need to look for anything yourself. Just follow the crowd and you'll find the birds, which may be a good thing or a bad thing. We found the pitta that way, anyways, the Monster from the Black Lagoon above being clustered around a bush and log on top of which wriggled a few worms placed by someone in an attempt to lure it out. When I first saw it, it was lurking in the shadows of the bush, but from even there its iridescent colors were visible- as well as its Superman underpants.We waited, breath bated, for about half-an-hour, and then it seemed to say to itself 'what the heck' and flew right out in the open, scratched itself, dug up some worms (ignoring the ones we had placed out for it too, I may add), then ceremoniously defecated, pooped, created excrement, upon the ground. After that it seemed to be relieved, waddled around a bit more, before the shutters got too much for it and went back in the bush.