On 5 May 2018, a boat with 10 birders/bird photographers boarded from Marina Cove, Sentosa and headed towards the eastern part of the Singapore Strait up until closer to coast of Pengerang, Malaysia.
The weather was fine, and we expected we should see a mixture of the usual resident seabirds as well as some spring migrants on passage. Early May should bring us some Swinhoe’s Storm Petrels and Short-tailed Shearwaters. Our hunch proved correct.
The Short-tailed Shearwater is listed as a rare passage migrant for Singapore, and we were glad to see 3 of them in this trip, with a close view of a pair quickly flying past our boat.
The Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel is a reliable and common passage migrant at the Singapore Strait. We expected bigger numbers to show up, but we did manage to see at least 6 birds.
What was unexpected was an appearance of a faraway Gull-billed Tern, which was a bonus bird. Unfortunately, it was only seen by a few people on board.
Other terns seen were the usual Black-naped Terns, Lesser Crested Terns, Greater cRested Terns, Little Terns and Bridled Terns.
Here is the table of the bird count for the trip:
| Bird Name | Count |
|---|---|
| Short-tailed Shearwater | 3 |
| Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel | 6 |
| Bridled Tern | 19 |
| Little Tern | 30 |
| Gull-billed Tern | 1 |
| Black-naped Tern | 2 |
| Greater Crested Tern | 2 |
| Lesser Crested Tern | 29 |
| Tern sp | 10 |
| Swiftlets sp | 6 |
