Oriental-Pied Hornbill !

It's been so long since I last went to the Changi Beach

park, so, I decided to pay the lovely place a visit. Wow! It was

really hot there!( I wanted it to be like that ) The first bird I saw was

the rock/common pigeon.( obviously ) Then, I walked on. There was

a quite a number of common mynas hopping along the beach. A male

striped albatross( the butterfly ) was fluttering around, and stopping to

puddle. I then started on the board walk. I could hear common ioras( a bird )

singing, and lime butterflies flying above me. The rest of the walk wasn't that

interesting. Until...... The white-bellied sea eagle swooped by over the water

and grabbed a large fish for a meal. Okay, the walk went back to being

uninteresting. So, I headed back to square one. On the way, a

common sandpiper showed up.

( the image is not very clear as the bird was not very close to me and I had to zoom a lot )

Asian-glossy starlings flying from bush to bush, there was no

sign of a single plover. Back to the main stretch! I started running down the

beach, just having fun...... It started to drizzle...... Well, that did not stop me.

When I was walking back, I found this dazzling beetle( sadly, head chopped off )

Its wing cover was emerald green. The photo below shows the underside.

Now, all the excitement begins! Prepare! ......

There was a large dark area in one of the trees. What could it

be? After I got closer to it, I found out that it was a ORIENTAL-PIED HORNBILL!

Were my eyes playing a trick on me? I could hardly believe myself. The bird

has re-colonised in Singapore, recently last year. A small population breeds

in Singapore. Good thing I came to Changi to record it! Here are two images( below )

Well, it was time to go. My head was still spinning around,

coz of that hornbill.