“I saw these birds some time back last year at the Bestway building carpark, not the public car park in front of the building, but you turn right to the tenants’ carpark. As some sightings mentioned Tanjong Pagar, I believe they should be the same ones.
“There were one or two males, I can’t remember, and two females, and some chicks. I thought they were ordinary chickens, and saw one fly, until I read a Straits Times article and realised they are pretty rare. I’m sorry the pictures are not very clear, but I only had my handphone with me.”
Pornchada
Singapore
20th January 2011
2 responses
In response to the above posting, how can we tell whether the bird is a pure Red Junglefowl or the offspring of interbreeding with a domestic chicken?
Residents of Jalan Hang Jebat have been woken most mornings for the last few months to the sound of a male rooster crowing. I presumed it to be an escaped domestic fowl — perhaps a survivor from one of Mesjid Hang Jebat’s famous chicken curries — but this morning I rose early, grabbed the binocs and eventually spotted the head and neck of the bird roosting about three metres off the ground in heavy foliage. It had all the distinctive features of a male Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus) and looked to be straight from the pages of Jeyarajasingham and Pearson’s field guide, which I had with me.
Are Red Junglefowl now more widespread in Singapore or are they more likely to be the result of interbreeding with domestic chickens? (And which one makes the best chicken curry?)
Makes you wonder about the ancestry of the white jungle fowls that have been reported on this website.