Jurong Bird Park

Today was a lot of walk for me. I went to a bird park, Jurong Bird Park. When I said walk I didn't mean walk from home to the park. Nooo.. 'cause that'd be crazy and a bit silly as public buses (SMRT) are all around the area. In the park I walked a lot, that's what I meant. The park itself impressed me very much. Since I love animals so I felt like home when I was there. LOL (No, I'm not Tarzan. I don't live with animals) I just love the nature and animals. It was not only the animals but also the park itself making me want to stay longer there. They created the park as close as the real jungle, with the big trees, perfect humidity as if it's in the rain forest, and also the birds' voices surrounding the park. The entrance fee was S$18. That was including watching animal shows and walking around. There are daily 3-4 shows but because I was going there after midday so I could only see 2 of them. I saw parrots and hawks shows.

Let me tell you a lil' bit of the shows, one by one. The parrots show first. We (visitors) were aimed to a some kind of stadium. They began with impressing us with a big colorful parrot (I never remember each name of kinds of parrots) flying over our heads from the back of the stadium towards the stage. And then they started showing some other birds including a big vulture, flamingos!, other types of parrots, a quite big hornbill and.. that is all.

Hornbill flying so close to me


Parrots flying over our heads

They made the show not so boring just by showing different kinds of parrots but also by taking some of the audience to the stage to play with the birds. The coolest part of the show to me was when being flown over by some parrots over my head!!

Then one hour later I moved to the second show. It was a hawks show. They performed like 5-6 hawks let free between the audience. They flew over us. They were quite big and didn't look so gentle. No they were not attacking any of us but it's just their appearance that looked not gentle unlike a cute harmless hamster as a silly comparison. Well you know hawks naturally don't have a cute face and look. Well the show was pretty much the same like the parrots one so nothing really much for me to say here about the hawks show.


Playing with hawks

Apart from the shows, I was also impressed by other things. Most of the birds are kept in the cage, somehow they let some others free and some others within a fence. For example, I went seeing flamingos and pelicans which were let free. They do have their 'home' where they always stay with their own group but they were not kept in a cage. It was amazing to me to meet them so close and see them free. I also saw smaller sized birds. They're mostly from South East Asia. Some of them were beautiful and some other were just the ones I've seen quite a lot either on TV or live.


Bathing flamingos and pelicans

I found out that some birds with certain kinds have their own certain kinds as well. For example, I thought hornbills had only one kind but today I found out that there's a lot of kinds of hornbills with of course different types of horn size and feather color.

Anyway, there was one bird that really amazed me. It's called .. the world's biggest eagle!!! WOW it was big! I don't know what exactly to say here but woow... I was like "Ahh.. so this is the biggest eagle in the world..". It stood up there on a rock firmly like a big strong guy. LOL


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Oh I was feeling lucky finally I could see the "alive version" of bird of paradise. I've been to Papua where the birds originally come from but all I'd seen was the dead version that the local people make as precious souvenirs. Anyway the bird of paradise sounds quite loud. I don't know whether it was because they were freaked out when I was there or that's just their nature sounding so loud. I was pretty satisfied though.

Bird of Paradise

I have one question for you before I continue. Do you know the Harry Potter movies? (Silly, I know that was a stupid question.. who doesn't know Harry Potter). Anyway my point is you know who Hedwig is, eh? Or what Hedwig is, to be exact. OK it's an owl, snow white sort of one. I saw him today in the park! (I assume it's male). It was big! Looked bigger than in the movie. It was not the only one though. The kinds of that owl are kept in so-called World of Darkness -a very dark room. They're all big. Badly no allowance to take any pictures of them.

What else? Oh, penguins! Even though I've been wanting to see penguins in real life I was not that impressed by the ones that the park had. No snow. Just a cold small room with some guys feeding them with fish.


Penguins


Diving penguins

And so on.. other birds and so other birds. Talking birds? checked!; Ostrich? checked!; Kasuari? checked!; Pigeons? oh so checked! even the crowned ones; ducks? so have seen even the mandarin ones!; Fish and iguana? not related but double checked!. They are not so necessary to say in details here I guess. I just hope the pictures I took help this story as close as your imagination when reading line by line. :D

Enjoy!


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