Save the birds, spy on their courtship
Tracy Sua, Straits Times 9 Feb 08;
Study of nesting hornbills earned BirdPark and partners international conservation prize
SEVEN nesting pairs of hornbills lost their privacy as new parents in the name of an effort to save the species.
These Oriental Pied Hornbills were housed in man-made nesting boxes, each wired up with four spy cameras which tracked the birds' activities from courtship through to egg-laying and feeding the nestlings.
This two-year pioneering study bagged the Jurong BirdPark and its partners, the National Parks Board and the Nanyang Technological University, a rare international award.
Rare, because the prize given out at the International Symposium on Breeding Birds in Captivity for achievements in avian research and conservation was last awarded 10 years ago.
The symposium gathered agriculturalists and zoologists from 14 countries. Nearly 30 entries were in the running for the award.
Jurong BirdPark's executive director Wong Hon Mun, who is reported to have resigned from his post this week, said that the research team was proud that its work in conservation had won international recognition.
The Oriental Pied Hornbill once disappeared completely from Singapore. It has been staging a shaky comeback over the past 14 years on Pulau Ubin and in Changi Village.
The team that studied this notoriously secretive bird managed to capture footage of mother birds eating their own chicks, something that had never been seen before.
These birds, which do not breed well in captivity and even in the wild, are known to be fussy about where their nests are sited.
Their nests must be high above the ground and in old or diseased trees, which provide crannies in which the birds lay their eggs.
Dr Wong explained that the female hornbill seals herself and her chicks up in these cubbyholes and leaves it to the male to forage for food.
Although hornbills normally eat fruit, they start feeding on small animals such as lizards and bats when they are nesting.
Since diseased trees are often the first to be given the chop, hornbills have been losing their nesting sites.
The study team's first order of business was to design nesting boxes that the birds would deign to use.
The boxes, fitted with cameras and placed in Jurong BirdPark and on Pulau Ubin, must have passed muster, because breeding pairs took up residence in them. Over two years, these pairs, along with others in the wild, produced 28 chicks.
Six in 10 of the youngsters in the study survived. The chicks that did not either fell out of the nest or were eaten by predators, but most were eaten by their mothers.
The researchers hope to find out whether this culling is innate or if it is the result of insufficient food.
Part Two of the study will give the birds smaller nests, such as those found in the wild. Higher-resolution cameras will be used and DNA mapping will be performed to find out how the hornbills in the BirdPark, on Pulau Ubin and in the wild are related.
