Members of the Nature Society (Singapore)’s Bird Group have for decades been just seeking out new species of birds to add ticks to their checklists. The aim has always been to fill up their checklist to see who can be the champion birdwatcher of Singapore. There were many suggestions that they could at the same time note down what the birds were doing. But no one was interested in that. A perceptive young birder had commented that many birdwatchers “were constrained by personal inadequacies to make just mere listings of the species present, which does not do real justice to what is being observed in front of our eyes” (D. L. Yong, personal communication) https://besgroup.org/2007/12/31/yong-ding-li-a-birder-to-watch/.
When a non-biologist came across a bird picking up ants and placing them under the wings in April 1988, no one could explain what was going on https://besgroup.org/2015/12/03/milestone-june-2006-anting/. This triggered the necessity of studying bird behaviour. Together with a few others, we planned for a new activity group to look into bird behaviour. This new group was not to compete with the old Bird Group. Rather, it was to complement its recreational activities with research-based studies of bird behaviour.
When the proposal for the new activity group was tabled before the Executive Committee of the Nature Society in June 2005, the Bird Group went berserk. Although the new group would be indulging in research on bird behaviour, the existing Bird Group still felt threatened. All members of the Executive Committee supported the proposal except Lim Kim Keang, who represented the Bird Group. Things dragged on for a few months until our no-nonsense Hon. President Dr. Geh Min suggested that the matter then need to be brought to the general membership at an Extraordinary General Meeting. This proposal did the trick. The Bird Group backed down as it knew it had only a handful of supporters.
On 1st July 2005 the Bird Ecology Study Group or BESG in short was formally accepted as a new activity group of the Nature Society (Singapore). Immediately we set up a weblog besgroup.org with the help of Jacqueline Lau. The first posting appeared on 1st July 2005 with a title of Excuse Me, Are You an Ornithologist? https://besgroup.org/2005/07/01/excuse-me-are-you-an-ornithologist/.
The success of the blog went beyond our wildest dreams. The initial posts attracted numerous items of bird behaviour that most birdwatchers can easily note down when out in the field. These include what birds eat, where birds nest, their courtship behaviour, interactions with other birds and many more.
Within four years we posted more than a thousand articles of bird behaviour, attracting more than a million hits. The weblog became a valuable scientific database on bird behaviour. Many posts were consolidated and published in peer-review scientific journals https://besgroup.org/2008/09/18/publications-of-the-bird-ecology-study-group-2/. Although most of the contributors were locals, we were getting more and more supporters from all over the world. The weblog became one of the top few bird blogs in cyberspace.
