Go to Ngee Ann City along Orchard Road, at the point opposite the main entrance of Paragon Shopping Centre at 6.45pm and take in the soundscape till 7.30pm.
Significance:
At 7pm every day, thousands of Javan mynas descend onto trees along the Orchard Road shopping district, emitting a ferocious collective squawking and dirtying pavements with their droppings. First introduced to Singapore as a pet in the 1920s, this colonising species has out-competed its larger relative, the Common myna, to become the most common bird in the country.
The gregarious Javan myna forms large communal roosts in urban areas, where they are often considered a nuisance. Reportedly, up to 3,000 litres of water is used every night for pressure washing the Orchard Road pavements to rid them of the birds’ droppings. Efforts to scare them away—including high-pitched sonars and a hawk brought in from Jurong Bird Park—have failed.
Globally, the bird is listed as vulnerable to extinction, with only 2,500 to 9,000 left in its native range. Even in Singapore, the population has declined from 220,000 in the 1980s to 139,000 in the early 2000s.