Wildlife photographer, 20, spots rare Himalayan griffon vulture from Queenstown HDB living room

Wildlife photographer Lee Zhi Heng was lounging on his sofa on Feb. 5, oblivious of the impending adrenaline-inducing encounter he would soon experience.

Speaking to Mothership, the 20-year-old said something large flew past his living room window in the distance at around 2:40pm.

He clocked the large shadow as a raptor of some sort, and decided to investigate further.

"I’ve never seen one fly so low before so I grabbed my binoculars and took a closer look."

He initially thought it was a more common species of raptor, such as the oriental honey buzzard, but "a glimpse of a white, bald head started making [his] heart pump faster".

The mystery bird eventually settled down to perch on the rooftop of a Housing Development Board (HDB) block at 55 Strathmore Avenue, around 200m away, and Lee was able to identify it with his camera — a rare Himalayan griffon vulture.

Lee shared that the sighting gave him "the craziest rush of adrenaline", adding that he did not expect to see this species now, as the vultures are typically spotted in December and January.

Bothered by crows

To capture more shots of the vulture, Lee started going around to the other HDB blocks for better angles.

The vulture wasn't exactly by its lonesome either — Lee noted that a few crows "kept harassing it", pecking at its feathers and flying around the larger bird, perhaps in a bid to protect their territory and nests nearby.

However, the crows eventually left after their pestering did not get a rise out of the vulture.

Lee added:

"There were a few minutes where I noticed the vulture had its eyes shut, it looked visibly tired then, probably due to the long migration trip it took to arrive in Singapore."

After resting and preening its feathers, the vulture flew off towards the south side of the island at 3:45pm.

Didn't expect to have a closer encounter with the vulture

Like the Asian openbills, which were recently sighted in large numbers around Singapore, the Himalayan griffon vulture is a vagrant here.

This means that it is a migratory bird that ended up in an area outside of its normal geographic range or migration path.

The species is classified as "Near Threatened" according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

This is not Lee's first time seeing this species — his first sighting was in December 2021, when five Himalayan griffon vultures appeared alongside a cinereous vulture at Singapore Botanic Gardens.

"Back then I thought that it would’ve been the closest I would ever get to a vulture in the wild, but the encounter today was so much nearer than the one in 2021," Lee exclaimed.

In 2020, 12 vultures made unprecedented appearances at different parts of Singapore.

Since then however, it seems the species has been sighted a few times here in the past few years, according to Birds of Singapore.

As its name suggests, the Himalayan griffon vulture hails from the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau, but vagrants have also been spotted in Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia.

Top photo courtesy of Lee Zhi Heng