I have been to Singapore several times over the last eight years, and I have visited most of the animal collections there (all the major ones). This visit I was trying to work out which years I visited which collections and realised, rather to my shock, that I hadn't been to Jurong Bird Park since 2006!! On my 2011 Asian trip I missed out Singapore altogether; on the 2009 one I had to choose between the zoo or Jurong and chose the zoo (because I hadn't been to that since 2004!); and the previous trip was 2006. No wonder some of my recollections were a little hazy!
I have also never written a review of Jurong Bird Park – in fact I'm not sure there is any proper review of the park on Zoochat because it is discussed so often – so I am going to try and rectify that for those people not lucky enough to have visited Singapore. As a pre-note, it is quite probably the best bird park in the world. It is at any rate certainly in the top three – I haven't been to Walsrode in Germany or to Eden in South Africa which would be the other two contenders. It is by a very far distance the best bird park anywhere in Asia.
This time I had the company of the doyen of Singapore zoos, a certain Mr. Zooish. He was only available on the weekend and his advice had been that because the southeast Asia walk-through aviary was closed for renovation to leave Jurong to the end of my Singapore visit just in case it reopened in time. So I visited the new River Safari and the new S.E.A. Aquarium during the week (see elsewhere in the Singapore forum for those reviews) and left Jurong for the Saturday. However the southeast Asian aviary was still closed.
The exhibits at Jurong are mostly arranged around a single loop road which is handy for seeing everything. There is very little in the way of dead-ends, switch-backs and convoluted detours which make some zoos so frustrating. Randomness also makes those zoos interesting I guess, never knowing what is going to be tucked away in a corner, but with a bird park that surprise factor is often contained within the aviaries themselves. We were constantly finding unexpected birds in aviaries and trying to work out what they were in the absence of signage for them! There is a shuttle which runs the loop road (no monorail any more!), with a few walking paths leading between sections.
There are few (surprisingly few) smaller individual aviaries at Jurong. Most exhibits are in the form of walk-through aviaries, large open enclosures (e.g. for wading birds), and “aviary complexes” (e.g. the hornbill and toucan cluster, or Parrot Paradise). Really the only smaller set is on the Heliconia Walk where kingfishers and small passerines are displayed. There are also individual aviaries inside the southeast Asia walk-through but as I said this aviary was unfortunately still closed at the time of my visit (and it is my favourite aviary as well!). There is very little to criticise at Jurong in terms of the aviaries. The bird of prey aviaries are very tall but fairly narrow (and I don't like seeing them in aviaries anyway). The aviaries on Heliconia Walk and in the Parrot Paradise used to be much smaller but the internal partitions have been removed to increase living space and now they are much better. The World Of Darkness nocturnal house is atrocious with its tiny boxes and is the only real bad spot at Jurong. They should just close that house down and relocate the owls to outside aviaries (where they would be just as or even more visible, and definitely better off in terms of welfare). And then maybe re-develop the interior of the house and make it a proper-sized kiwi house! (There were kiwi at Jurong many years ago – gone by the time of my first visit in 2004, although the little map of the house's layout still had them labelled – and the enclosure they had been in was miniscule; in New Zealand there are obviously minimum standards for enclosure size for kiwi, and the minimum would encompass probably half the total area of Jurong's nocturnal house!).
Zooish and I went right on entering the bird park (due to the quite new Breeding and Research Centre being in that direction) but the park map has arrows pointing left. In the following walk-through I shall largely follow our route to the right. Zooish can fill in anything I have missed or got wrong (!), and additionally there are species lists for the park by Calyptorhynchus here: http://www.zoochat.com/266/species-list-jurong-348023/
At the entrance to the park are the penguins. In an outside enclosure – not to my liking, with its shallow pool and Hawaiian atmosphere – are African (black-footed/jackass) penguins. This was built where there used to be a far more interesting African wetland exhibit with saddlebills, shoebills, etc (all were relocated elsewhere in the park; all the cranes are currently off-exhibit though). Most of the other penguins at Jurong are housed inside a refrigerated house. The penguins in here are Humboldt's, king, macaroni and rockhopper. The little blue penguins used to be in here but are currently off-display. The Humboldt's breed; the kings used to but have not for a while; the rockhoppers and macaronis are all old birds. Also in here are the last remaining Inca tern, kittiwakes, silver gulls, and Atlantic puffins (some in with the penguins, some – including all the puffins – in a too-small separated area). The puffins were fantastic. I must have seen them here previously but I don't remember them at all. I loved watching them swimming laboriously underwater, looking exactly like those wind-up toys you might put in the bath to amuse children!
The Breeding and Research Centre is where hand-reared birds are on display inside their incubators and cages. The actual breeding side of things is off-display. There was a nice display of egg diversity in here too, presumably all laid by birds at the park. Next to this was the Hawk Walk (Kings of the Skies Show) but we didn't watch a show. There is a falconry museum at this spot too – are there live birds on display here too? We didn't go to see so I'm not sure.
Moving past the “macaws on sticks”, a small pool for Caribbean and a few Chilean flamingoes, and the “Wetlands” (saddlebill storks, yellow-billed storks, etc – most of the species which had been where the African penguins are now), we made a small detour up a path to the “Riverine” display, a diving duck exhibit with underwater viewing (turtles included). Then it was on to Flamingo Lake where the bulk of the park's flamingoes live: roughly 250-300 each of greater and lesser flamingoes. They look fantastic in big flocks like this, and it was especially interesting being able to see the size difference between the two species side by side. The unfortunately now-solitary shoebill has its exhibit just here as well. Hopefully they can get a mate for it, but on the other hand they have been through several shoebills over the years with no breeding results.
Pelican Cove is interesting in that it houses most of the world's pelican species all in one place. Most of them are European white and dalmation pelicans, but there are a very few pink-backeds, spot-billeds and American whites, and just one lone brown pelican. The Australian pelicans are kept separate just a short distance away on Swan Lake (with mute and black swans, magpie geese, and some waterfowl). Recent arrivals are four Peruvian pelicans, so the park now displays every pelican species, but these are housed on the far side of the park in the Shore Birds aviary. Ideally, from my point of view at least, the park would attempt to build up the numbers of all the species so they are in proper social groups, and potentially have them all breeding. Currently I think only the Europeans and dalmations nest?
Parrot Paradise is just by the pelicans' area. I didn't like this section in former years because there were a lot of small bare aviaries, the usual sort you see parrots in because they tend to be destructive towards plants! Now the small aviaries have had in-between sections removed to make them much larger, and many of them are well-planted. Now I like it much better, and I'm sure the parrots are much happier. There were some “ordinary” species in here – cockatoos and the like – but also ones I was more interested in like hawk-headed parrots and Pesquet's parrot. There were also a few randoms, including toucans and touracos.
Next we come to the Grand Spectacle of the park, the Waterfall Aviary, thirteen stories high apparently. This is a huge walk-through which has been here since the park first opened. Back then it looked incredibly bare in the photos but now it is a veritable rainforest. At one end is the thirty metre waterfall. For the first couple of decades the aviary was home to a mix of birds from all over the world. Then another walk-through called Lory Loft was opened and the reportedly 300 lories and lorikeets from the Waterfall Aviary were captured and transferred over; and that I think was when it was decided turn the Waterfall Aviary into the “African Waterfall Aviary”. A lot of time and effort was put into trying to catch all the non-African species from the aviary – and if you've ever been there you will appreciate what a job that would have been! – but now they have had a reverse decision and decided to turn it global again, with many non-African species being re-released in there! The aviary is amazing but also difficult to see birds in due to its size and height. You could literally spend all day in here and not find everything. Unfortunately there is very little in the way of signage so you (perhaps even the management!) have no full idea what is actually in there. Best bet for seeing many of the species is to be there at one of the two scheduled feeding times when mealworms are thrown around. This is when all the starlings in particular appear (although nowhere near the numbers there used to be when I first visited), and it is also your best chance of seeing the five different species of rollers in there!
Past Dinosaur Descendants (ostrich, emu, common rhea, common cassowary; it would be nice to have the other two cassowaries as well!!) is Jungle Jewels, the South American walk-through aviary. In front of the aviary is the Bird Discovery Centre which has some fascinating static displays of skeletons, feathers, eggs etc. When Jungle Jewels first opened this building housed numerous hummingbird species in glass-fronted box-type cages, but by the first time I visited they had all died and (from memory) the cages were occupied by manakins and tanagers. (I'll just add a question mark here – ? – because I'm not sure if that is an accurate memory or not as regards to the types of birds!). The Jungle Jewels walk-through has remained neotropical, albeit with the more-northerly addition of Carolina wood ducks, and includes several species of tanagers, honeycreepers, yellow-hooded blackbird, long-tailed mockingbird, Peruvian pigeon, sun conure, hawk-headed parrot and others. The jacanas in there originally have now gone. We looked for the spangled cotingas which may or may not still be in there but did not find them.
There is a path from near here back to the entrance, which passes a pool for mandarin ducks and the southeast Asia walk-through aviary if that had been open, as well as Flamingo Lake.
Continuing along the main route from Dinosaur Descendants and Jungle Jewels you pass the birds of prey aviaries, as noted very tall but narrow. I remembered them as being much worse than they actually are. They had secretary birds in one aviary back in 2004/2006 but now I don't think the park has this species.
Lory Loft is another gigantic walk-through, built over an existing valley so extremely deep from ground to ceiling. Back when I first saw it it had recently opened and was very bare. I didn't like it back then. Now it is thick with trees and palms and I like it a lot. There are raised walkways for visitors (no access to ground level) which give a brilliant perspective as you are right up in the canopy, as it were. Most of the birds were resting out of the heat, but there are a lot of different species of lories and lorikeets in here, as well as eclectus and blue-winged kookaburra (not that we saw the latter). I think this would make an awesome Australian aviary with the addition of various pigeons and something like brush turkeys on the ground (maybe even cassowary, as visitors are restricted to the walkways).
Getting near to the end of the visit now! After Lory Loft are the generously-proportioned aviaries which make up Window On Paradise (birds of paradise), Royal Ramble (crowned pigeons) and Hornbills & Toucans (er, hornbills and toucans). All of these are very tall, they must be 30 feet high and well-planted. The hornbill collection must surely be the largest in the world now, but the viewing of them is not the greatest any more due to the originally-black mesh now being green. The other two blocks of aviaries (Window On Paradise and Royal Ramble) are amongst my favourites at Jurong. Windows On Paradise can be viewed from ground level through mesh (again, now a bit difficult for both viewing and photography) as well as from a raised walkway which actually runs through the three aviaries and has no barrier. The birds of paradise housed here are lesser, red, king, and twelve-wired. The reds and kings I think are both off-show (in the aviaries behind) because one of the aviaries currently houses two pairs of Peruvian cocks-of-the-rock!! This was the species I really wanted to see at Jurong, and I was not disappointed at all. They are staggeringly beautiful birds. I could have watched them all day. WRS imported four pairs with two staying at Jurong and two supposedly going to the River Safari – in my opinion it would be better keeping them all in one place as they are of course a lek species where the males form group displays to attract female attention. Royal Ramble is another line of three aviaries, lower-roofed than the others and this time all viewed from a ground-level walkway running through them. Originally each aviary housed one group each of the three crowned pigeon species. Now the Victoria crowned pigeons have all been moved to the southeast Asia walk-through (with Papuan hornbills and green peafowl replacing them here) and the other two aviaries have become a bit mixed (both blue and Scheepmaker's together in both). There are also a few other birds like spice imperial pigeons and nicobar pigeons.
The last few aviaries include the adjoining Shore Birds and scarlet ibis aviaries. There is a passageway between the two, with glass viewing. Shore Birds has a (very small) wave-washing saltwater pool; this is where the Peruvian pelicans are kept, along with great cormorants and nankeen night herons. The scarlet ibis aviary also has a few straw-necked ibis and some other species. The roseate spoonbill aviary is nearby – I always thought this was a rather odd aviary because it can only be viewed from a relative distance, with no visitor path next to it. The Heliconia Walk is another of my favourites now. Last time I visited these aviaries were quite small and dark, and housed various native kingfishers and woodpeckers. Now they have been opened up (middle sections removed, and they seem brighter?). There is a wide range of small passerines in the first few aviaries, including some surprise ones like European robin! Bartlett's bleeding heart pigeons, fairly new from San Diego but already with grown young, were a delight, much nicer than the Luzon bleeding heart which we have in Australasian zoos. I think the mousebirds are also quite new. The kingfisher aviaries display collared, ruddy and an Oriental dwarf kingfisher. The final exhibit is the aforementioned horrible World Of Darkness.
I think that all went on for a bit longer than I intended, but the Jurong Bird Park is a must-see amongst the world's animal collections. In fact I rate it much higher than the Singapore Zoo itself because there are so few negative aspects to the displays. They have a new curator now, from Brazil, and since he came on the scene the number of exciting new birds has started to increase again (e.g. the Peruvian pelicans and cocks-of-the-rock). As noted in other threads there had been a down-turn in the collection over the years but it is now building again and can only get even more exciting.