A flight to paradise
How 3,500 birds are being moved from Jurong to Mandai
Two bird keepers, holding nets, enter the enclosure of a sarus crane in Jurong Bird Park to restrain it.
Despite being relatively slender compared with human adults, Megan, as the crane is known to keepers, can be intimidating up close – she is about 180cm tall at full stretch.
And the 13-year-old is primed to strike back if she feels threatened.
“Cranes’ defensive mechanism involves them pecking and kicking – both hurt,” says deputy head keeper Peter Teo, who has worked at the park for 11 years.
The operation on Feb 21 is part of a 16-week-long move of the park’s 3,500 or so avian residents from Jurong to Bird Paradise in Mandai Wildlife Reserve – the birds’ new home which opens on May 8.
Birds were moved from Jan 4, the day after the 52-year-old park bade farewell to its last visitors.
Mr Teo says that when restrained, cranes “still try their best to fight back”, adding that even when their legs are tucked in, they will “try to push open to get themselves free”.
Hence, “you need to really know how much force to give the bird, not too tight, and not too loose”, he says.
As senior keeper Sadali Tali steps into Megan’s enclosure, he pauses to put on a pair of protective gloves.
Then, it’s go time.
About 15 seconds after the keepers approach Megan, Mr Sadali nets her.
The speed at which Megan is netted is a testament to the keepers’ expertise, says keeper Pang Jia Hao, who carries Megan out of her enclosure.
Restraining birds is a task typically reserved for the park’s experienced keepers – Mr Pang and Mr Sadali have more than three decades combined, and earlier that morning were involved in restraining black crowned cranes.
“Today, the keywords are 'decisive' and 'safe',” Mr Pang says ahead of the operation. Just after the birds are secured, he adds: “It’s an experienced team, so the operation went very smoothly.”
He says: “When we are restraining, we want to control these danger points — the claws, the wings and the beak.
“It’s the proper method of handling them, so the bird was pretty calm and wasn’t really struggling.”
Before being placed in a padded crate, Megan is given a clean bill of health by Dr Ellen Rasidi, an avian vet.
“We don’t usually catch the animal, so this is a good opportunity to make sure there’s no underlying condition – we get to have a close-up look,” says Mr Pang.
While long-legged and long-necked birds such as cranes are restrained for the move, the preferred method is getting birds to enter pet crates or smaller aviaries themselves, says Dr Luis Neves, vice-president of animal care at the Mandai Wildlife Group.
Migration
planning
Planning for the move, which started more than a year ago, was done with a heavy focus on conditioning.
Conditioning involves getting the birds used to particular routines, and some are trained to perform certain actions voluntarily, such as entering pet crates.
“Behavioural management is the baseline of how we care for the animals,” says Dr Neves.
“We always focus on managing our animals in a way that makes everything we need to do with them as stress-free as possible, both for them and for us.”
Elaborating on how conditioning is done, he says: “Like most of us, the best way to get to a bird’s heart is through its stomach.
“Normally, we use rewards — their favourite food — to start making them understand that if they come to a certain area, and they do what we want them to do — which can be as simple as standing there, or going inside the carrier — they get a reward.”
“It’s a gradual process,” says Dr Neves. “Different animals respond at different speeds — just like humans have different learning speeds.”
Species such as parrots, starlings and hornbills progress faster because they are more intelligent and curious, he says, while others such as ibises, storks and pigeons might take a bit longer, and may never progress as far as their more responsive counterparts.
As for the cranes, they were not conditioned to voluntarily enter a crate, Dr Neves says, and it was assessed that they could be manually restrained and crated in a manner that was safe for them and the keepers.
Nets are used to restrain these birds so that neither keepers nor the birds would be injured if the bird starts thrashing, and the birds are removed from the nets and carried by keepers for vet checks.
Others like Suzy – an American bald eagle and one of the stars of the old park’s Kings of the Skies show that featured birds of prey – are conditioned to enter pet crates themselves.
Conditioning
Training started in September 2022, says animal behaviour and programmes senior manager Clarence Saw, who has worked at the park for 34 years – always with the raptors – and knows the date Suzy arrived at the bird park from the Czech Republic by heart: Oct 4, 2002.
“She is a very temperamental bird. On some days she is fine when you are carrying her around or presenting her to the audience during the programme. Some days, she can be a little bit moody, and she will try to take a bite at you,” he says of Suzy on Feb 15, her scheduled move day.
“There are good days and bad days, as with people as well,” Mr Saw adds. “Birds of prey are pretty unpredictable, so we will never know (if it’s a good day) until we start to take them out, and then we’ll find out.”
On this note, he goes to the Hawk Arena’s back-of-house area to retrieve Suzy, and emerges with her perched on his left arm, while she nibbles at pieces of raw chicken he is holding in his clenched right fist.
Suzy’s entrance into the pet crate is fuss-free. A few pieces of chicken, placed in choice locations, do the trick.
While the whole process seemed effortless for both bird and keeper, Mr Saw says it took time and patience to condition Suzy to enter the crate.
“The birds would prefer an open, larger space, but because of the move, we have to make sure that they are comfortable going in and staying in the pet carrier for some time,” he says.
Training started with keepers placing Suzy next to the carrier so she could understand that it posed no threat to her.
For remaining calm, she was given food rewards, which were gradually placed deeper and deeper into the crate until she was comfortable entering it to eat.
Then she had to get used to spending time in the crate. Five minutes per day was gradually increased to half an hour – the estimated length of the journey to Mandai.
As this takes place, Suzy thrashes around once or twice, and Mr Saw is quick to calm her, gently tapping on the carrier and speaking to her as the 21-year-old eagle takes a final glimpse of her home of about two decades through the crate’s mesh.
“I was telling her you’re going to a new home, and to relax, and everything’s going to be fine,” he says.
Suzy is joined in the truck by others – including cinereous vultures Borat and Baros, white-backed vultures Dick and Harry, and Nyx, a Malay fish owl, who looks out of his crate attentively as he is being carried onto the truck by Mr Saw and manager for animal behaviour and programmes Chandramohan.
Over in the bird park’s Waterfall Aviary, bird conditioning was done en masse.
Within large walk-through aviaries such as the Waterfall Aviary and African Treetops, smaller aviaries – some built-in and others added in preparation for the move – were used as conditioning areas for the birds.
Keepers left trays of food for the birds in these aviaries to lure them in.
When the birds, such as scarlet macaws, got comfortable entering the aviaries, keepers closed the aviary doors to get them used to being inside, so that they could be safely retrieved when the time to move came.
Dr Neves says the benefits of conditioning are seen primarily when the birds are retrieved to be crated for the move.
The process is quite stress-free, he adds, noting that some scarlet macaws are able to voluntarily enter pet crates.
“Most of the birds – even if they are small – are very food-oriented. So they actually are the easier ones to retrieve,” says Dr Neves.
“The more difficult ones are the ones that are slightly bigger – like the storks and the ibises – just because they might take a bit longer to get used to the whole conditioning process, but even they are already conditioned as well.”
Tags on birds and regular visual counts also help keepers to keep tabs on them.
“We know exactly who is where in Jurong, and also here in Mandai,” says Dr Neves. “We know exactly how many animals we need to bring out of – for example – Lory Loft in Jurong, and we keep an updated inventory of all our animals that is put in an international database system.”
On the
road
Soon after Jurong Bird Park’s shutters were lowered for the last time, its main tram station became a holding area for pet carrier crates.
Some 760 pet crates across seven sizes are being used in the move, with the smallest about 25cm tall, while the largest stands at 89cm.
The pet carriers were tailored to individual species’ characteristics to maximise the birds’ comfort on the road.
“If a bird is used to perching on a tree, to make a bird be in a crate without having anything to perch on is not good, they will not be comfortable,” says Dr Neves.
Hence, perches were added for birds who naturally feel more comfortable higher up in trees, such as songbirds, thrushes, hornbills and parrots.
As for ground birds such as pheasants and ducks, their carriers were fitted with anti-slip mats so they would not be affected much by any sudden movements while on the road.
Meanwhile, 30 wooden crates were custom-made for large birds such as cassowaries, storks and cranes.
Dr Neves says that these were built according to international standards and were similar to those used for cross-border animal shipments between zoos.
Okay so, this is a crate for a crane-size animal.
So these are some of the special features for it.
We have two padlocks.
In case one malfunctions, there’s a secondary one.
This one can be padlocked as well,
for another layer of safety.
These crates, all across, have all these little holes.
These are air circulation holes for the animal inside
Likewise, it’s also for the keepers –
we can torchlight and see the animal from outside
to make sure the animal is okay in the crate.
Come, I’ll show you the inside.
It’s very spacious, even I can go in.
I can even jump,
to make sure it’s secure.
So these are all the pads here for the animal.
So should the animal… in the truck, it’s very bumpy, it’s very rocky,
maybe the road to Mandai is very uneven right…
this can cushion the animal, should they hit the side of the crate,
which is actually quite rough, could be quite rough.
The crowned crane is a terrestrial animal.
It doesn’t perch, so it doesn’t have to have a perch.
But we do lay mats on the ground so the animal can grip onto the mat
and it won’t slip and fall inside the crate.
Dr Neves adds that dry runs were conducted in December 2022 to choose the fastest route between Jurong and Mandai, and to get drivers familiar with the route as well as what to do if hiccups arise.
“We always have a backup vehicle in case something happens because we want the travel time to be as short as possible,” he says.
“After all the planning and all the dry runs, I think the first day of the move was when we actually felt, 'okay, this is happening, things are progressing, here we go'.”
Arriving
home
In Crimson Wetlands, a South America-themed aviary, a batch of scarlet macaws is released on March 22 – joining others that had been released two weeks prior – along with some sun parakeets.
Zookeeper tip 101:
Macaws can break the nuts very easily
because they have very strong beaks
and you wouldn’t want to put your fingers in there.
Today, we’ve released 12 scarlet macaws
and 60 sun parakeets to Crimson Wetlands.
They are the second batch of birds that came to the habitat.
We bring these birds in batches
to make it easier for us to actually move the entire flock.
We have very large flocks in Jurong and we can’t just move 60 macaws in one go.
So the first batch, normally, is the ones which are more advanced in the conditioning programme,
which means they’ll be easily more settled in,
and also very responsive to us,
and these new tenants will actually learn from the first ones that came, the pioneers,
who actually know how to manoeuvre around this place already
and they will learn from them where to get food,
where to go for shelter, where’s the best place to roost at night.
Parrots are very vocal animals.
The fact that they’re screaming – that’s quite normal.
And very important for us
is to start seeing the new flock immediately merge with the existing flock
and you can already start seeing that
so that’s all a sign that everything’s going well.
At the new park’s Sky Amphitheatre on Feb 15, a platoon of keepers – trolleys in tow – move in to receive Suzy and her fellow birds of prey as a truck carrying the birds is reversed into position to let them off.
One by one, the crates are unloaded and wheeled towards the birds’ new enclosures.
Although the truck driver is barely acquainted with Suzy, he has learnt – just as her keepers do – to talk to her.
“Bye bye Suzy, new home, new home,” he says, as Suzy’s crate is lowered from the truck.
When Suzy arrives at her new enclosure, which is about twice the size of her old home, Mr Saw wastes little time and readies the crate to let her out.
Door open, the eagle hops out onto the pebbled ground and leaps onto a perch.
“Good girl Suzy, well done!” Mr Chandra calls out.
But – as far as Suzy is concerned – things don’t go swimmingly for long.
Affixed to the roof of her enclosure is a swinging branch that is suspended by chains – a type of perch Suzy is unfamiliar with.
Curious, she attempts to mount herself on the branch, only to realise, much to her surprise, that it moves.
The flustered bird flaps her wings in shock as she looks instead for a more stable landing point and drops a few feathers in the rattling moment, which draws a chuckle from her keepers.
“Where she was in the bird park, the perches were more static,” says Mr Saw. “She had a bit of a shock, but I’m confident that she will eventually be comfortable sitting on these perches.”
He adds: “We have installed these dynamic branches so that it will simulate how these birds will sit on tree branches in the wild, which are not naturally very stable.”
Seemingly still unnerved by the moving branch, Suzy decides to settle in the middle of a more familiar feature – a water dish, identical to one she had in Jurong.
“She might consider taking a shower,” Mr Saw says. “It’s very hard to tell if a bird is happy or not, but she is not angry – I know for sure – so I’m thinking she’s happy.”
Nearby, some of Suzy’s show mates are learning to live together for the first time.
Previously housed in separate enclosures, four vultures – Borat, Baros, Harry and Dick – will be housemates in Bird Paradise, and Mr Saw oversees their release.
“They were already performing together, so we thought – why not put them together?” he says.
“They are not chasing each other, there are no signs of aggression, it looks like all is good now,” he adds.
In the enclosure, each of the vultures finds a spot to perch on.
Over in the Wings of Asia aviary on Feb 21, Megan – once the only bird in her enclosure – also needs to get used to new housemates – about 300 of them.
And it appears that that is a task the crane is not quite ready for.
Some 50 seconds after the door to her crate is opened, she remains in it, much to her keepers’ puzzlement, and Mr Teo decides to give her a helping hand, reaching in to guide her out.
Now free to explore the 0.79ha aviary, which is about the size of a football field, Megan takes tentative steps and then spends about a minute rooted to the spot, possibly dazzled by the row of luminous safety vests in front of her – required for park staff and guests, as minor works are still ongoing – or perhaps overwhelmed by the size of her new home.
“She looks so small here,” says Mr Teo, as the size difference between Megan’s new and old enclosures dawns on him.
She eventually sets forth, rousing her feathers as she moves along.
Settling
in
On March 23, about five weeks after Suzy’s move, training for the Bird Paradise’s new birds of prey programme – Predators on Wings – is under way.
We’re going to get her to fly from the rock wall
towards the stage.
If she shows good response,
we’re going to attempt, today, for the first time,
to get her to fly from the third level of that rock wall
over to the benches where the audience are seated.
Suzy!
She was coming down really, really fast
from the height she took off from
because of the speed she was coming in,
the surface wasn’t good enough for her to land nicely
and she sort of, like, slid off.
We will have to look into that to
ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Eh, don’t come at me!
Little bit of hiccups because some of the flights were very different.
I don’t have anything!
And as expected,
there will be some confusion from the bird’s behaviour.
We will continue to condition her to this.
I’m very confident that she will eventually be able to make it.
Some of these birds are getting comfortable already.
They’re not so stressed by
especially the screen, the very huge screen -
they kept staring at, initially.
Some don’t even want to go near that direction.
Today is the first time that we are
actually attaching a real meat bone
for them to scavenge from.
The reason why we are actually attaching the bone into the carcass
is to actually simulate how vultures would feed in the wild.
They are known to come down to a carcass in large groups.
There will be a lot of competition going on.
The struggle for survival is very clear
as seen how it is with our group of vultures here.
All the scuffling and biting,
a bit of fighting among vultures in the wild.
At Wings of Asia, four Australian pelicans are taking their time to warm up to people.
Mr Teo, who heads the aviary, hopes the birds can eventually be involved in programmes or token feeding sessions for visitors, but they seemingly refuse to come near the terraces closest to a guest viewing platform despite efforts to lure them with fish.
“They are still very wary of people,” he says on March 25. “They are very skittish, very timid, and very easily get spooked.”
On a conditioning process that has gone on for six weeks thus far, he adds: “They were one of the first to arrive in Wings of Asia, and till this day, I’m still trying to condition them and desensitise them (to visitors).”
He cheers each time they move onto a terrace closer to the viewing platform, where he stands.
Conditioning other birds such as the white-coloured pied imperial pigeons and Asian glossy starlings to eat from feeders located close to guest areas was a smoother process, taking about a month.
“What I’m aiming for is to have a bunch of guests here and the birds still come here, so guests can have a close-up look at the ‘white pigeon’,” says Mr Teo, as he holds an angklung, which he sounds at feeding times as a call to the birds.
“And that’s where I’ll come in and say this is the pied imperial pigeon, there are different kinds of pigeons… I will stand in and give guests more information on the variety of birds and not just call them ‘pigeons’.
“I am hoping that one day I can actually get them to eat from guests’ hands. Maybe I can do a wedding,” he says.
“Wings of Asia wedding theme,” he muses.
As he dreams of witnessing couples say their vows in the aviary he is in charge of, bird couples elsewhere in the park have settled down and bred weeks after moving in.
In the Heart of Africa aviary, says Dr Neves, there now is a female Madagascar crested ibis sitting high up in a nest.
“It's too high up for us to see if there're eggs but she has been sitting for a couple of days now, so there're probably some eggs there,” he says.
“In the Breeding and Research Centre, which was the first area to receive animals, we already started having very good results with some very threatened species like Negros bleeding-heart doves – so we’re really seeing signs that the animals are settling in.”
At the centre on Feb 15, the beak of a female white crowned hornbill is seen sticking out of a sealed nest box – a sign that she is about to lay, or has laid, eggs.
She is dependent on her male mate for food, and he flies around their aviary with a mouse in his beak, waiting for an opportune moment to feed her.
While the flurry of activity takes place in Mandai, about 1,000 birds in Jurong are still awaiting their big move, as at March 22. All are slated to move within the next six weeks.
“Everyone is very tired but, at the same time, very happy as well. And the birds – as you can hear – are also quite happy and settling in,” says Dr Neves, amid twittering and birdsong.
And his team is prepared to go the extra mile to get the final bird to Mandai, safely and within welfare standards.
“Even if it takes us one more week to catch the last possible dove in Jurong, we will do it.”