Annnnnnnnd that marks the end of the 2024/2025 season’s peak raptor migration in Singapore! The Bird Society of Singapore held our third Raptor Watch at the Henderson Waves, this year across four (not three!) Sundays – 20 October, 27 October, 3 November and 10 November. It’s the third year in the row we’ve had the privilege of organising this event.
Our event this year was slightly quieter bird-wise than last year’s. Many of the season’s “megas” (Besra, Bat Hawk, Short-toed Snake Eagle, Amur Falcon, Eurasian Hobby) also showed up either at Henderson Waves or the adjacent Mount Faber for those who had chance to bird on weekdays or Saturdays instead. Having said that, we still managed to find and point out locally desirable species such as the Eastern Marsh Harrier, and more importantly had the opportunity to share many cool facts about these raptors with many participants.
BirdSoc SG’s youngest member, Kaeden Sim, was also featured in a Straits Times article about the rise of birdwatching among Singapore youth. The article also highlighted our Raptor Watch – do check out the accompanying video on Five reasons to get into birding too if you’re looking for some motivation to get started!
This year’s Henderson Waves raptor watch was also accompanied by our first ever merchandise run, and we’re very grateful to all of you for showing us your unwavering support. All of the beautiful designs were prepared by our member Emma Chao. (Psst, she also recently represented BirdSoc SG in CNA’s Talking Point that you can watch here). Our BirdSoc SG shop is not open at the moment, but we’ll definitely be back – you can be notified when our shop reopens by entering your email here. Make sure to follow this website and our socials (Facebook, Instagram) for all our other updates too!
Our freely available raptor resources (and many others) will continue to be available on our website:
- https://singaporebirds.com/raptor-guide/
- https://singaporebirds.com/2021/10/15/rap101-how-to-identify-common-raptors/
- https://singaporebirds.com/2021/12/12/rap201-how-to-identify-uncommon-raptors/
- https://singaporebirds.com/2022/08/09/rap301-what-is-that-raptor/
We’d like to thank the National Parks Board for again allowing us to conduct our event, to all of you who dropped by, and look forward to seeing you again next year!
