April 18, 2023
SINGAPORE – When news of an endangered white-crowned hornbill began circulating on Sunday in one of Mr Andy Chew’s chat groups, the 51-year-old made a beeline for Pulau Ubin, where the bird had been spotted.
“I was actually hesitant to head over due to the distance… but knowing that the hornbill is a rare bird, I decided to go ahead,” said Mr Chew, who was out photographing birds at Pasir Panjang when he got the alert.
It took him a journey of 90 minutes by MRT, bus, bumboat and taxi to get to the Chek Jawa Wetlands, where a group of photographers had already gathered.
“I was fortunate that when I arrived at the location, the hornbill was already very active, doing circuits which allowed me to shoot it in flight and also its landings,” said Mr Chew, who photographed the bird for two hours before a storm rolled in.
Dr Yong Ding Li, regional coordinator for migratory bird conservation and red listing at BirdLife International, said this is the first time a white-crowned hornbill has been sighted here for almost 40 years, noting that the last recorded sighting of such a bird was in the 1980s at the Botanic Gardens. That bird was believed to have been a pet.
This is the first time a white-crowned hornbill has been sighted here in almost 40 years, said Dr Yong Ding Li, regional coordinator for migratory bird conservation and red listing at BirdLife International. PHOTO: ANDY CHEW
The white-crowned hornbill is not a migratory species and lives in the tropical rainforests of neighbouring countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, said Dr Yong.
“A very coarse estimate of (the hornbill’s) total population.. would be somewhere between 5,000–10,000,” Dr Yong said.
The bird was listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List as an endangered species in 2018, up from its previous status of near threatened.
“This is on the basis that the species is has declined, and will continue to decline at high rates as a result of the rapid loss of its forest habitat.” said Dr Yong.
The hornbill lives in lowland forests, which are rapidly being cleared across the region, with the bird also threatened by hunting and the pet trade, he added.
There was speculation on social media that the bird spotted on Sunday was also a pet, owing to its tattered tail feathers, but Dr Yong said this was not unexpected for a species that hunts snakes, lizards and small mammals on the ground regularly.