The BESG weblog (https://besgroup.org/) proved extremely popular once it was created in 2005. Local as well as overseas viewers slowly increased. Bird behaviour was something new and exciting to birdwatchers tired with just adding new species to their checklists. Within a few years we had an archive of over 4,000 posts on the many and varied aspects of bird behaviour. We also posted behaviours of butterflies, dragonflies, bats, palm civet, etc. Such success apparently shamed the Bird Group although their stamp-collecting activities were successful in filling an album that eventually turned into books on bird guides. Being intensively jealous of our success, Lim Kim Keang, Lim Kim Seng and Dr. Ho Hua Chew of the Bird Group conspired to destroy BESG.
In August 2011, Lim Kim Seng, a Muslim convert, was pressured into using his religion to make a police report on the BESG. The accusation was that BESG made a statement that BG was no more top dog, now that BESG was more successful in dealing with birds than BG’s activities of just looking at birds.
As dogs are haram (forbidden or proscribed) by Islamic law, they claimed that the statement insulted their Muslim members. As Chairman of the BESG, I was naturally summoned to the police station to answer the accusation. At the police station, I was informed that I was called in to answer the absurd accusation. The police were amused and commented that the accusers probably did not understand English. I may have replied that “if they think they are dogs, who am to say they are not?”
At the following Executive Committee meeting of the Nature Society, Tony O’Dempsey, also a Muslim convert, was enraged that the Bird Group used his religion to make such an absurd accusation. Dr. Ho Hua Chew, probably the ring leader, apologised profusely on behalf of the group. Well, the Bird Group failed in their plot to cause problems and with their tails between their legs, continued running a second-rate activity group.
They waited patiently until Dr. Shawn Lum was elected Hon. President and pressured him to get rid of BESG. I was approached and given three choices:
(1) Join up with the Bird Group that I found disgusting;
(2) Stop dealing with birds or
(3) Remove the word “bird” from Bird Ecology Study Group.
I rejected all three choices and immediately got the BESG affiliated to the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.
This move eventually led to Eileen’s legacy of a substantial sum of money that was supposed to go to the Nature Society, went to the LKC Natural History Museum instead. Apparently, history repeated itself as some years earlier the Bird Group annoyed a major donor in Lady Y.P. McNeice with its obnoxious behaviour.
