Amar’s observations… many new to ornithology… but why so many?

Those who frequent this site must surely be aware that there has been an unusual flood of posts by Dato’ Dr. Amar-Singh HSS or Amar as he prefers to be addressed, during these few months.

Dato’ Dr. Amar Singh HSS with Datin Dr. Swee-Im Lim during a recent trip to Sikkim.

Amar’s first contribution was way back in August 2009 on the Raffles’ Malkoha (Phaenicophaeus chlorophaeus chlorophaeus) building a nest HERE. From there on his contributions poured in regularly until December 2019 when BESG discontinued postings HERE. After 19 months of inactivity, Teo Lee Wei and K came forward and volunteered to take over the running of the website. The site was resurrected in July 2021 and we began posting again HERE. There were limited contributions then as earlier contributors were yet to be aware of the revival of this website.

However, we had plentiful contributions from Amar in storage. Since we stopped posting, Amar continued with his regular birding forays. At the same time, he continued to send me his observations. By the time the BESG website was restarted, I had accumulated maybe more than a hundred observations, or is there more?

Although the website is now under new management, I have taken the responsibility to post all of Amar’s contributions. This is the least I can do. These are valuable observations and many are new to ornithology. After all, observations not recorded and shared, cannot be taken as contributing to the advancement of our ornithological knowledge.

As of now, 32 have been posted – either one, two or even three per day. And there will be many more to come. So please bear with us if you continue to see more and more of Amar’s observations during the coming months. In addition to the backlog, Amar is still sending his current observations.

Amar is a bird-watcher ahead of his time. At a time when birdwatchers moved around with only a pair of binoculars, he had a camera to record bird behaviour. When cameras became fashionable, Amar had already added a videocam to his birding equipment, not to mention a shotgun microphone for audio recordings. He is still going out regularly, sending us his observations, for after all, bird watching is in his blood.

YC Wee

19 September. 2021