The Hooded Pitta season is here again: 2. Enforcement

The pitta season is here again… and as in past years the birds were lured with mealworms LINK.

Jeremiah Loei’s video and photographs of a Hooded Pitta (Pitta sordida) at the Singapore Botanical Gardens’ Ginger Garden in early December 2016 helped attract a crowd (above, below).

As usual there was a rush by photographers to try improve on the quality of their earlier images and birdwatchers, maybe to update their checklists (below).

After all, this Hooded Pitta is an attractive uncommon visitor and passage migrant that visited Singapore yearly since the late 1980s (Wang & Hails, 2007). But this does not mean that it was not around before, as birdwatchers were not aware of its earlier presence.

It is a yearly tradition that the Ginger Garden would be crowded as bird enthusiasts try to get as close to the pitta as possible (above).

Another traditional practice is to sprinkle mealworms on strategic spots to guarantee the appearance of the pitta.

This time around the National Parks Board roped off the area (above) and put up signs of no climbing over the ropes and no feeding of animals (below). But apparently the people at the NParks were a wee too late as there were plenty of mealworms within the enclosure. The ropes helped keep the crown off the planted areas though.

Jeremiah Loei
Singapore
8th December 2016

Reference:
Wang, L.K. & C. J. Hails, 2007. An annotated checklist of birds of Singapore. Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, Supplement 15: 1-179.

This post is a cooperative effort between Birds, Insects N Creatures Of Asia and BESG to bring the study of birds and their behavior through photography and videography to a wider audience.