Blue-winged Pitta Pitta moluccensis
Singapore Botanic Gardens, 24 February 2006

In the middle of January 2006 an absurdly showy Blue-winged Pitta Pitta moluccensis was found over-wintering in the Singapore Botanic Gardens, remaining faithful to a small area of low, dank vegetation in a section of the gardens called the Ginger Garden. Over the next few weeks every birder and photographer in Singapore visited the bird - many over and over again - and reports were put out on the Yahoo group “wildbirdSingapore” hinting at how habituated the bird had obviously become to its many admirers, and how fantastic the views were that it was giving. It was hard to read about without feeling strong pangs of jealousy: in many years of birding I’ve only ever managed to see ONE before (despite once being in Malaysia at just the right time of year at an excellent site called Fraser’s Hill where migrant pittas are attracted to bright lights round a hilltop radio mast and drop out of the skies like giant moths…except (predictably) when it’s raining so hard that any nocturnal-feeding pitta risks being knocked out by raindrops the size of cricket balls…still, that’s another story…). Remarkably towards the end of February I was rostered a trip to Singapore - and the pitta was still there…

Despite their stunning plumages, pittas can be incredibly hard to see - hopping silently and dissolving into the darkness on the forest floor or standing absolutely still and transforming into a leaf or a twig at will. It’s a surprising trick to be able to pull off when you’re the size of a chunky thrush and coloured like a irridescent rainbow, but for a pitta it’s apparently no more difficult than breathing. Most easily seen during the breeding season when birds can sometimes be “called in” by imitating their whistled calls, wintering individuals are normally extremely wary - not usually hopping around a Botanic Gardens within yards of walkers, joggers and highly over-excited birders! I stand to be corrected, but I doubt whether anyone has ever found such an extraordinarily unconcerned Blue-winged Pitta before.

For those of you who may be interested in techie details, the photos were taken with a Canon 20D and 100-400isL lens. I don’t like to use flash (particularly when photographing large-eyed birds used to feeding in the gloom of a rainforest) so for these photos I had to use a very high 1600 ISO and a relatively slow shutter speed (this may have been a staggeringly unflappable bird by pitta standards but it still liked to feed in the equivalent of the shade of a forest floor) - mostly no more than 1/60th of a second. Frankly, I’m amazed how well some of the shots came out…

There are about thirty species of pitta, all closely related, similar in shape (short-tailed and long-legged), and belonging to just one family - the Pittidae. They’re found throughout the tropics from Africa to Australasia, with the centre of the family’s distribution in south-east Asia. Sought after by birders everywhere they are a remarkably beautiful group of birds “adorned with brilliant and strongly contrasted colours. The rich blues and crimsons, the delicate greens, yellows, and purples, the velvety black and pure white (three of which tints at least generally adorn each species) remind one of the Tanagers of South America; and, in fact, these two groups are almost the only ones which have no one characteristic tint or style of dress, but whose different species seem free to adorn themselves with the brightest hues from Nature’s laboratory.” Alfred Russel Wallace, (The Ibis, January 1864). Exactly.

The Blue-winged Pitta has a very wide distribution in south-east Asia, breeding in southern Yunnan, China; Annam and Cochinchina, Vietnam; Cambodia; Laos; the southern Shan States, Pegu Hills, Karen Hills and south Arakan to Tenasserim, Burma (Myanmar); Thailand; and northern Peninsular Malaysia. Evidence also suggests that some individuals breed in Borneo.

During the northern winter, Blue-winged Pittas are found throughout the southern part of the breeding range, but more northern areas are vacated as the dry season sets in, and birds migrate south to Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo (some individuals in the northern part of the range may stay on their breeding grounds all year, as birds have been seen in winter in the Pegu Hills of Burma). In its wintering range, the species apparently favours secondary forest or forest edge, rather than primary forest, and although it may be found at high altitudes during migration it usually winters in lowlands and hills. They are said to be territorial on their wintering grounds, remaining faithful to a particular site - as with this individual…