THE BIRDS OB SINGAPORE ISLAND 
these large northern birds by another name, Butorides 
javanicus amiirensis. A most interesting thing is that these 
large northerners migrate to the south in the winter and live 
side by side with our own smaller resident birds ! We should 
therefore be quite right in including; the range of atmtretisis 
in that of the little green heron for the purposes of this book. 
Furthermore, a few years ago a celebrated ornithologist at 
home pointed out that a certain small heron in South America 
was also so ver\' similar in appearance to javanicus that surely 
the two could only be but local races of the same bird! But 
here we are going to leave the question before we get more 
deeply involved and tempted to examine all the known members 
of the genus Butorides with a view to getting the correct range 
of our puchong, which would be a long job. 
Status in Sifigapore : —This heron is very common in 
Singapore and indeed on all the islands hereabouts. It is 
almost exclusively a denizen of the mangrove and is nomeroiis 
alike in the sheltered creeks and rivers and in localities facing 
the open sea Occasionally it strays into other places such as 
marshy ground near the coast but this is unustml in Singapore 
and the solitary bird that frequented the shores of the lake of 
the Botanic Gardens for many months, during which period it 
got to be quite well-known to visitors, is worth noting as 
exceptional. 
Field Notes : — ^The puchong is usually seen alone although 
several may be found in one small area of jnangrove. It is 
well able to take care of itself and we have always found it a 
very shy bird. Some months ago we did a lot of work along 
the coast of Singapore in a sampan, prying into every creek 
and comer of the mangrove that we came across, Un<ler 
these conditions we saw a large number of herons. They 
would always take flight long before they were in danger and 
would invariably fly out to sea and never back over the land. 
They would keep low down over the water and after making 
a wide semi-circular sweep alight again in the mangrove a 
long distance ahead or behind us. In the former case the 
l>erformancc might he repeated many times in a morning, the 
bird never allow^ing: the sampan to approach verv' close. 
Through glasses we could see that they nsnally sat on one of 
the lower exposed roots of the mangrove and their bright 
yellow legs were the most consptctious feature about them. 
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