Earlier this year, the Bird Society of Singapore held its Annual General Meeting. Two new members joined the Executive Committee, and another joined the Council. The new Council composition is now live on our About Us page, with the following new appointments:
- Movin Nyanasengeran as President
- Raghav Narayanswamy as Vice-President
- Collin Chua as ExCo Member
- Sng Chen Xi as Social Media Chair
- Sandra Chia as Welfare Chair
Keita Sin is stepping down after two years as BirdSoc SG’s Founding President. He had the following words to share as he passes the role to Movin.
Back in 2021, some of our founding members wrote personal bios to accompany the announcement of our Society’s launch. Movin wrote about an adventure to Taman Negara that the two of us did together in 2017 – a crazy trip I will never ever forget (we dipped SO MANY birds) – and Raghav fondly recounted his story as a young birdwatcher. Meanwhile, I wrote a dry, politically correct paragraph that read like a “Typical Presidential Announcement”. You know, the sort of boring sentences that will be in one of those beautifully decorated emails which you delete without ever reading. Truth be told, the initial draft that I wrote for my bio two years ago actually looked like this:
There used to be a playground in front of my grandparents’ house. Nothing grand. A 44m x 11m sand pit with two horizontal bars and one slide. It was named “Acorn Square” though there never was any. I liked that place. There were stray cats. There were pebbles of different shapes and sizes. There were roly-polies that I could annoy. I have fond memories of playing catch with my grandfather and running up the tiny slide like a king, but the playground disappeared 13 years ago when it was converted into a housing unit. I’ve since been to all other playgrounds in the neighbourhood and there are still others in the district which I hope to visit one day, but I know there are many that I will never get a chance to. They’ll be gone before I’ll ever get to visit, I’m sure, and I’m also no longer at an age where I can monkey around at playgrounds in broad daylight without getting side-eyed.
I picked up birdwatching 9 years ago. This hobby has brought me joy, satisfaction, and countless experiences that I would otherwise never have had. Simultaneously, this obsession, now both my paid and unpaid responsibility, has brought me great pain. I read of birds vanishing from places I’ve never even heard of before. I’ve literally watched a primary rainforest getting chopped down right before my eyes. I’ve witnessed poaching and there was nothing I could do. What’s worse, my story is not unique; these are tales that many naturalists around the world can share and empathise with. I cannot help but feel like a powerless child watching his favourite playgrounds evaporate one by one, and sometimes wonder if I would have been happier had I never been mystified by the wonders of nature.
Despite these thoughts, I know I can be optimistic about the programs that the Bird Society of Singapore will lead. Our resources have made tremendous improvements to the local birdwatching community. Our works have propelled science. Our efforts contribute to conservation. The effects of our works will reach far into the future, and though our Society’s mission might be centralised in Singapore, I know that our impacts will extend far beyond. Our committed team in the Bird Society of Singapore will continue expanding upon the work we’ve done so far, and at the same time inspire future generations of scientists, conservationists, and community leaders.
I know I’m not alone in this mission to protect the playgrounds that I treasure. We can make a difference as a Society.
I deleted the draft and decided to take what I felt was the “professional” way forward. I’ve never felt comfortable sharing my personal experiences online, even though these stories likely have no importance to readers. I was worried that we were going to be seen as just some group that was formed to rival another in the nation because of workplace bullying that some of us experienced, even though that was not our intention at all. And most importantly, I was uncertain whether I could properly execute the leadership responsibilities in a brand-new Society to deliver the ideas that we were selling. I preferred presenting a cleanly crafted bio.
Things are slightly different today. I still continue to feel uneasy talking about myself publicly – this will probably be the first and last time I am doing so in my Society capacity – but I feel less worried about being judged because I know that there are many people around who truly have faith in our expertise. The support that I’ve received both from members and non-members alike over the past two years has been tremendous, evident from the attendance at our events and our Database submissions among other markers. For this, I am deeply thankful, and continue to look forward to the Society’s future work as well as the community’s reception towards it.
The Bird Society of Singapore’s story started in 2016 as the Singapore Birds Project, founded by Francis Yap and See Toh Yew Wai. Their insane efforts created the foundation for what soon evolved into the Singapore Bird Records Committee, which I’ve had the honour to be the founding Chair of. Our team expanded further, and the Bird Society of Singapore was officially founded in March 2023 by 17 enthusiastic members. We now have a powerful force of over 30 members, and I’m sure that the Society will continue to grow as we recruit more who are keen to work on making a difference to the community. I’m confident that our work over the past few years has and will continue to contribute towards the protection of many birdwatchers’ playgrounds.
I’ll continue leading various projects under the Society’s umbrella, but for now, it’s time for me to take a step back and let the younger ones slowly assume responsibility. We now have two new members in the Society’s council, Chen Xi and Collin, and our new President, Movin, is…wait hold on, he’s a few years older than me even though he simultaneously looks both 14 and 40. But anyway, you get the point. Our new Vice President, Raghav, is still younger than me last I checked. I don’t think his age has caught up to me yet? At least I haven’t heard him complaining about the various bodily-deteriorations I’m starting to experience.
It is my hope that our Society’s work during my time as the President has had a positive impact on you, however small it might be. If it didn’t, then I’m confident the changes that would be brought about by our new leadership no doubt will. One thing that will remain constant, though, is that our Society will always aim to create a safe space for people to explore their birdy ideas. A place where everyone is allowed to voice their opinions and have discussions professionally, and most importantly, actually have fun while doing work.
If we meet in the field, either in Singapore or abroad, please say hi!
Sin Yong Chee Keita
Founding President, Bird Society of Singapore (March 2023 – March 2025)
Chair, Singapore Bird Records Committee (2021 – present)
From Movin, our incoming President:
Being Keita’s second-in-command at the Bird Society of Singapore has been such a major part of my life over the last few years. All the walks, talks, and booths amongst other things have been such a rewarding way to help share the love of birds and birding with the community. Now I feel I’m stepping into such big shoes. Keita has done such a wonderful job taking us through these two years of uncharted waters as a fledgling society.
Keita has said a lot about what birding and running BirdSoc meant to him and I can’t help but say that I do feel similarly about a lot of them. We’ve grown so much, built so many partnerships that we hope will continue for years to come but there’s always more things that we can do and contribute towards. I think finding new and unexpected ways to grow will be something I’d like to focus on, as I take on the helm from Keita. More community engagement is something we definitely have in mind, but what form it might take exactly is something that we want to be creative about. I think birding has gone from being just a nerdy hobby to something that has the power to really bring people together to make a big difference in some way and I’d love to capitalise on that!
Movin Nyanasengeran
Incoming President, Bird Society of Singapore
Vice-President, Bird Society of Singapore (March 2023 – March 2025)
And Raghav, the incoming Vice-President:
I first contributed to the Singapore Birds Project in 2016, as a writer for some of the earliest species pages posted on the website. Francis and See Toh were managing the site then, gathering photos, collating conservation statuses, writing the bulk of the species writeups – essentially building the entire website from the ground up. While the species pages took five years to fully materialize, the site quickly became the go-to resource for birders in Singapore to learn more about Singapore’s birds. Being a part of this work in its early stages was meaningful, helped me become a better birder, and hopefully brought some value to birders in this country at a time when quality information on local avifauna was still somewhat scattered and poorly accessible.
Our Singapore Bird Database came along in 2021. The records were the hard work of Keita and Dillen, who looked through countless primary and secondary resources, museum specimens, and social media posts to compile the first edition of this database. I was in NS then and spent my weekends writing many tens of thousands of lines of code to build a voting dashboard for Records Committee members, public-facing website for the records, various other little pages, and deploy all this to the web safely (with some help from Francis). There were definitely some bugs along the way (still learning); thank you for your patience… I am pretty happy with the growth of this resource – in less than four short years, the size of this collection has nearly tripled, thanks to all your record submissions!
Maintaining and expanding these online resources have formed the bulk of our efforts so far. As part of this ExCo, extending our work into the community with more physical events will be one of my priorities. We are also always open to collaborations with individuals and groups that share our vision of conserving Singapore’s birds – please reach out!
Raghav Narayanswamy
Incoming Vice-President, Bird Society of Singapore
Tech & Data Lead, Bird Society of Singapore (March 2023 – present)