In Search Of Birds: Hot 'n' humid

Thursday 23 April 2009

Hot 'n' humid

Went to Bukit Timah today but, frankly, it was so hot and humid which, coupled with only 4 hours' sleep last night meant I ended up doing very little! The heat was 31 degrees (high 90s) and the humidity an appalling 90%! Walking was hellish, but I did manage to see some species, such as Yellow-vented Bulbul, Asian Fairy-bluebird, Pacific Swallow, Germain's Swiftlet, Crimson Sunbird (brief view, hoping for better!), Javan Myna, Tree Sparrow, and Banded Woodpecker.

As well as these birds, there were large monitor lizards on the path, I nearly stepped on a three-feet long specimen, and abundant monkeys, which were very cute - I love monkeys - but there were signs everywhere warning people not to feed them as that makes the monkeys aggressive and is bad for them. There were also some large and beautiful butterflies and some scary-looking large ants.

Last evening I went up to the 21st floor and took a photo of the city lit up, something Singapore is famous for. I had to go high to get above the roof of the next-door Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple, a large and lovely new Chinese temple (must get photo of that before I leave on Saturday). Five minutes after this photo was taken, a spectacular tropical storm erupted.

Funny sign on MRT train, among other prohibited items was a sign stating 'No durians'. Durians are spectacularly smelly fruit very popular in SE Asia, so I am going to track some down tomorrow to see if they really smell as appalling as they are reputed to be.

For some reason Wordpress is being shite and screwing up the formatting, hence funny, all over place appearance.

Logged on to the BBC to find bad news: Saints have been deducted 10 points: if we stay up they get deducted straight away and we go down; if we don't survive relegation this season then they get deducted next season so we will start League 1 on -10 points. Saints fans had an idea this was coming but it's no less a kick in the teeth for all that, and quite frankly I think the FA are run by a bunch of morons and the whole system is completely retarded. Relegation was a very real possibility, but to be relegated by a bunch of bureaucratic tossers makes it very hard to swallow. Those bastards certainly know how to kick a club and it's fans when we're down. However, the club's demise was started by Rupert Lowe and the former board, who want stringing up from the Itchen Bridge for wrecking the club in the first place. Gutted.
I thought distance might make it less painful, but it doesn't.