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Oriental Pied Hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris)
This forest bird depends on large living trees to build its nests within tree cavities. It eats mainly fruits, but also takes insects and small reptiles, birds and mammals. It helps disperse seeds that are too big for the smaller birds to eat.
The Oriental Pied Hornbill was thought to be extinct in Singapore. In 1994, more than 130 years after the last officially recorded breeding, a pair was spotted in Pulau Ubin. The Singapore Hornbill Project has enabled this Singapore species to re-establish healthy colonies on Pulau Ubin and the mainland. Today, its population numbers around one hundred.
Pictured here are Bobby and Serene, two hornbills from the Pulau Ubin population. Bobby is one of the ‘results’ of the Singapore Hornbill Project’s breeding programme. Read more about Singapore’s hornbills in the Conservation section of this issue.
Nature Through A Young Artist’s Eyes
Where other people see dead leaves and flowers, Myrth Tan sees art.
A Year 2 student in Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary), Myrth uses art as a way to connect people with nature. Based on her experiences of a trip to the Dairy Farm Nature Park, she created seven colourful paintings using dead plant material.
Through her paintings, Myrth hopes that people will come to appreciate the beauty of nature before they disappear. “My pieces are about how people have lost their connection with nature and their interaction with nature is limited to paintings and photos,” she said. “This is a man-made attempt to beautify nature that has been lost, by using vivid colours and paints,” she said.
Myrth’s paintings were developed through the Illuminating Nature Programme, an initiative by Raffles Girls’ School (RGS) and Artists Caravan, and supported by NParks. Through this programme, RGS students worked with professional practitioners in various disciplines, including art, to learn about nature in a holistic and site-specific way. This culminated in the Manicured Nature Art Exhibition, held from 14 May to 29 June 2011, where Myrth’s art was also exhibited.
Artists Caravan, an independent, non-profit, local artists’ collective, concurrently organised a six-week residency programme for artists at Dairy Farm Nature Park. There, the artists responded to the environment over an extended period. One of the artists, Dr Wang Luo Bing, guided Myrth to develop ideas for her paintings over a month-long period.
“The paintings behind the plant material are vague and not completely accurate, to show how nature has become a mere memory that cannot be fully recollected,” explained Myrth. “If we don’t stop to admire and appreciate nature, these vague paintings and dead plants will be all that we have to remember nature by, if they are all that we have left.”
By Lena Han
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