Jurong Bird Park in Singapore

I have constantly mentioned on this blog that I was never a fan of animals. I never dreamt of owning my own pet and feeding a silly dog every freaking day. It’s not that I hate dogs or any other animals, I just don’t see myself as a pet owner, that’s all. But the thing is, despite of my hatred for having pets, I have to admit that I’ve always been a fan of zoos. Even if it’s just a trip to the school bird “sanctuary” aka gubat sa parking, I was always game to go. So you would’ve probably guessed how excited I was that we pushed through with the plan to visit Jurong Bird Park! Oh weee! I’ve been there before, and I have to say, every visit is always worth the entrance ticket. For only SG$26, inclusive of a roundtrip ticket for the park panorail, you can spend an entire day from 8AM until 6PM, just walking around the park and looking for those birdies.

First thing you’ll see when you enter would be the macaws from the parrot family. While I was looking at this particular picture of the macaws, I thought they weren’t real, parang clay lang.

But aside from the macaws, one of the first few birds we saw were the penguins. Okay, this is where I got confused. Because of my constant exposure to Batman, Happy Feet and other movies that connected penguins with snow, I found it really weird that there were penguins swimming under the sun. O.O So does this mean penguins can live outside the cold? Malabo. I am yet to research on this one.

 

Walking for a few more miles would get you to the flamingo lake which had, well, flamingos. They looked really pretty with their rosy pink feathers. But did you know that flamingos aren’t born with pink feathers? Yep, the host from the Birds N Buddies show told us flamingos are born with gray feathers that will soon shed to give way to the pink feathers. Pretty cool huh? I wish I was capable of that kind of shedding.

I forgot the names of the birds below, so I don’t think I can say much about them anymore. Hahaha. But I should warn you that if you’re not really the nature or animal planet type of person (like my brother), walking into aviaries might give you a heart attack. There were birds flying above our heads when we entered this little aviary, and my siblings went seriously nuts when they saw 5 or so birds walking by the pathway. I swear, we had to wait for other people/bait before we can move forward from that bird-infested aviary.

Riding the panorail would be best done after lunch if you feel it’s too hot to continue walking. I would suggest riding all the way through so you can view the whole park from some height. It’s good they had a PA system that works as a tour guide to help you locate the birds.

One thing you can’t miss would be the shows! The first one is at around 10AM which features the different birds of prey and how they were used to hunt people. The second and more fun show would be the Birds N Buddies Show which starts at around 11AM, so make sure you’re on time for these shows.

Getting to Jurong Bird Park didn’t seem too hard, even if it was rather long. Imagine passing by 20 or so stations before getting to the bird park, sobrang tagal! But it was pretty convenient that the bus interchange was found inside the mall named Jurong Point and was very easy to understand.