October | 2018 | Micro Four Thirds Site

Singapore’s a really small island, but I’m happy we still have good nature reserves so we can find wildlife without leaving home.

Though I’m really not a wildlife photographer, my first time at the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve was a really great experience for me, as not only did I get to see the migratory birds there, I even got some extra surprises as well.

It’s not a petting zoo, so I brought along my zoom lens with the longest reach, the Panasonic Leica 100-400mm. Matched with my Panasonic GX85 and later GX9 camera, it combines the stabilization in both the camera body and the lens to reduce camera shake which is exacerbated when zooming in on distant subjects.

Firstly, here’re some shots I took of the place. I used the camera in my phone as I didn’t want to keep taking the 100-400mm off my camera. There’re nice vantage points which were built for visitors to comfortably yet discretely watch the wildlife.

Not far in from the carpark, we noticed quite some movement in the muddy waters. Mudskippers!

Throughout the reserve, you’ll see signs saying to beware of crocodiles. Yeah, sure. Crocodiles in Singapore. That’s really rare. And they seemed to take quite some measures to keep them crocs away anyway, with wooden poles lining the coast.

But on crossing the main bridge (yeah, it’s really called “Main Bridge”), a senior photographer told me there’s a croc some distance away. I looked. It was quite far, but it was quite a massive croc!

The first shot above is uncropped when I was fully zoomed in at 400mm, just to show you how far it was. But it was only on my way back and approaching the main bridge again that I realized that we did walk to part of the reserve near where the croc was in the earlier part of the day…

I also saw a couple of monitor lizards. One of them was just off the path:

Then there are the birds. Pacific swallows, egrets, herons, redshanks and storks. One of them even threw me a gang sign… just kidding…

Hope I managed to convey how much I enjoyed myself at the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve!

Panasonic GX85/GX80 ~US$490 / C$740 / £520
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Panasonic Leica 100-400mm f/4.0-6.3 ~US$1,236 / C$1,566 / £1,160
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October 2019

Paid another visit in October 2019, and I learnt that I should check the tide before a visit as it was high tide, and so there were much less places to see the mud skippers, and the sticks along the coast were flooded till the birds weren’t able to perch on them.

I also found that they had trimmed the trees where the storks loved to perch on, but maybe they’ll be back once the trees grow back.

I brought the same Panasonic 100-400mm lens with me, but in this visit, I had my newer Panasonic GX9. Main benefit of this newer camera (versus the GX85/GX80) is the higher 20MP resolution versus the 16MP. This meant that I had more resolution to crop my images should the birds be too far even for my 100-400mm lens.

Maybe it’s because the tide was higher that the monitor lizards were out in full force. Here’re the shots I got during this visit.