Straits Times, Singapore : Birds to fly Singapore 'flag' after stopover

By Dawn Wong

THE Singapore 'flag' will flutter all over the East by next year, from the Great Wall of China to the rolling hills of New Zealand.

HIGH-TECH TAGS

ABOUT half of the 4,500 animals at the Singapore Zoo and Night Safari have an ''identity card'' - a microchip the size of a rice grain.

Each chip has a code that can be read by a machine, said Dr G. Agoramoorthy, director of research and conservation at Wildlife Reserves Singapore.

With this code, a person can find out the animal's history - stored in a computer database - such as who its parents are, its age and when it entered the zoo.

Two farms here breeding endangered birds slip coded rings on the legs of their stock and their offspring, including those for export, said the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority.

This ensures that only birds that are not related are selected for breeding. It also helps to distinguish those bred in captivity from those caught in the wild.

It will be carried by migratory birds which fly between the northern part of East Asia and Australasia.

Each bird will sport a brightly-coloured plastic band, or flag, around its leg to announce that it has been in Singapore.

The flag, which can be spotted easily and could be of a single colour or a combination of colours, is the latest way of tagging the feathered creatures, which travel thousands of kilometres every year to tropical countries like Singapore, to escape the harsh winter in the North.

Those that fly through the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve will be tagged with a flag from the end of this year.

Currently, the birds are only tagged with metal rings carrying information about them, said Mr James Gan, the reserve's senior conservation officer.

About 500 have them put on each year.

He explained: 'The rings make it possible to monitor the birds scientifically.

'Each ring has a unique serial number, and announces the country which put it on and gives an address that anyone finding the ring can refer to.'

The flags will allow bird watchers to tell where the feathered creatures came from - without having to catch them.

So, if the tagged bird is sighted in, say, Japan, observers can report having spotted it to the National Parks Board in Singapore.

In this way, its travelling pattern can be tracked.

Mr Gan said that countries such as the United States, Japan and New Zealand already have the flag system in place.

Birds are tagged only once, in the country which finds them first.

Alaska's flag is dark green and worn on the bird's left leg; New Zealand's North Island uses white on the bird's right leg.

Singapore has not decided on its colour or the leg the flag will be worn on.

The flagged birds join a variety of creatures here, some endangered, that are fitted with some kind of identification tag.

According to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), about 19,000 specially-bred Arowanas or Dragon Fish have a microchip in them for easy identification.

The chip also helps in documenting breeding cycles.

All imported dogs must also have microchips, so that if they introduce a disease to Singapore, their place of origin can be traced quickly.

Further imports from that country can then be stopped, said the AVA.