 wetlandsa publication of Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve |
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10 No 6 Surprise visit by a Very Important Pelican Birds of Wetland Project II Art in the Wetlands Celebrate Nature A 'Sungei' Runs Through It HSBC/NYAA Youth Environmental Award 2005 Bird Flu: Frequently Asked Questions |
 “Birds
of Wetland Project” which was spearheaded by The British Council back in
2002 had 13 schools participating in the first phase. The partners in this
collaboration included the Ministry of Education (MOE), Sungei Buloh Wetland
Reserve, Nature Society of Singapore and London Wetlands Centre. This year,
a total of six partner schools were involved in the second phase of this
programme. This was my first experience collaborating with other organizations and working with students and teachers on such a specialized topic. A power point presentation was done at the start of this programme (in August 2005) which saw the SBWR’s theatre fully packed with enthusiastic students and teachers. I certainly gained a whole new world of experience and joy from my interactions with the young students. Their endless list of witty and creative questions during the bird census sessions make these training sessions more interesting. I strongly believe that through such a programme, many of these students would have acquired some basic knowledge on environmental awareness and learnt what communication, quiet observation, teamwork and analytical skill were all about. The objective of this project was to increase the students’ awareness on climate change and bird conservation. The activities that were conducted at SBWR included bird banding, sentinel and shorebird census. These activities equipped the students with the different skills needed to learn bird identification and helped them increase their awareness in bird conservation issues. Bird banding sessions required the students to spend three hours at SBWR, of which some time was also allocated to learning how to sketch birds. Such an activity gave them a firsthand experience looking at the birds and learning about the bird’s features such as shape of the bill, body, legs and plumage.  Regardless
of it being a sentinel or wader census, it was always an eye-opener for
the students. At times, walking about the Reserve for a sentinel census
for two to three hours may give the students more than they bargain for,
as they may come across other types of interesting wildlife. During a shorebird census, the students move together with a staff through the whole Reserve, stopping at selected ‘hides’ where they learn the ‘art’ of counting and identifying the shorebirds, within a limited time range. The six schools that participated in this year’s project were Loyang Primary School, Naval Base Primary School, Boon Lay Primary School and Peixin Primary School. |
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