Pasir Ris Park - Grey Heron Nests and Black-crowned Night Heron

Pasir Ris Park is located at the North-eastern part of Singapore and accessible via a 10 minutes walk from Pasir Ris MRT. During the park's creation, somebody wise had the foresight to preserve some of the existing mangrove ecosystem and retain two of the rivers, Sungai Api-api and to a lesser extend, Sungai Tampines.

There is a boardwalk that allows the park users to experience the mangrove forest without getting "muddy".

Often spotted here is a strong colony of Grey Heron nesting along Sungai Tampines (similar to the nesting colony seen across the channel at Pekan Quarry at Pulau Ubin) and when i was there, there was a number of "nature photographers" with their equipment taking pictures of the colony.

Nest with 3 Grey Herons



Here are some shots of this colony and a Black-crowned Night Heron which flew and landed quite close to me before taking off again.

I am amazed how this nesting colony is able to tolerate the noise that comes from the Downtown East Resort next door, but it seems they are pretty used to it.  

Grey Heron (with breeding plumage) with wings in flight mode



I was even told that there were sightings of otters in Sungai Tampines, a testament to great work and efforts of the various nature organisations in keeping this mangrove area alive and more importantly a sustainable ecosystem that supports multiple types of wildlife.

Juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron



The Juvenile Black-crown Night Heron seemed impervious to human presence and landed very closed to where we were and allow many of the nature photographers to snap with their huge lenses and comment how beautiful it was.



It stood on the horizontal prop roots for about 1-2 minutes before deciding, "ok guys -i think i had enough of the camera clicks and attention!" before flying of to the opposite side of the river away from the prying eyes of the photographers.