Jurong Bird Park

Stand still for a moment and listen. Out here in western Singapore, the air is thick and warm, and it carries the smell of wet leaves and cut grass. Somewhere in the trees, a bird is calling. Today that call comes from a wild bird. For about fifty years, though, this patch of Jurong rang with the voices of thousands of birds from every corner of the world. This was Jurong Bird Park, and its story is worth hearing, even now.

The first thing to know may surprise you. Jurong Bird Park is no longer open. In early 2023 the park closed its gates, and its birds moved east to a new home called Bird Paradise, in the Mandai wildlife area near the Singapore Zoo. So if you are standing near the old grounds, you are standing at the edge of a memory. The paths, the hillside, and the tropical heat remain. The parrots, the penguins, and the flamingos do not.

To understand why a bird park appeared here at all, you need to picture Jurong in the late 1960s. Singapore had only just become an independent country. Jurong was being turned from swamp and low hills into the nation's great industrial estate, a landscape of factories, shipyards, and new housing. The government wanted this working district to have green space too. A place where families could come on a weekend and breathe.

The idea is usually credited to Goh Keng Swee, one of the founding ministers of modern Singapore and the man closely tied to Jurong's industrial growth. The popular account says he visited a bird park abroad and came home convinced that Singapore should have one of its own. Whatever the exact spark, the plan moved quickly. The park opened in 1971, on the western slope of Jurong Hill.

That choice of site was clever. Jurong Hill gave the park natural slopes, shade, and drainage, so the designers could work with the land instead of flattening it. Visitors walked up and down gentle paths under tall trees. Rain fell hard and often here, as it does across Singapore, and the hillside carried the water away. The park felt less like a zoo and more like a garden that happened to be full of birds.

The heart of the park, for many visitors, was the Waterfall Aviary. This was a huge walk-in enclosure, built so that people and birds shared the same space. You did not look at the birds through glass. You walked among them, under a high mesh roof, while they flew overhead. Inside stood Jurong Falls, a man-made waterfall that was for years described as one of the tallest of its kind in the world.

Imagine that scene. Water falls in a white sheet down a wall of rock. The air fills with mist and the steady roar of falling water. Brightly coloured birds cross the spray, and the sunlight turns the mist silver. Many Singaporeans who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s remember that roar as the sound of a school trip, or a Sunday with their grandparents.

There is a second surprise in this story. A tropical bird park near the equator once kept penguins. Penguin Coast was a cool, indoor habitat built to hold species from colder southern waters. Outside, the temperature hovered around thirty degrees. Inside, the penguins swam in chilled water behind glass. For a child from Singapore, who might never see snow, this was a small piece of another planet.

The park was also known for its bird shows. In an open-air amphitheatre, trainers worked with parrots, hornbills, and birds of prey. Some birds flew low over the crowd, close enough to feel the rush of air from their wings. Others performed small tricks that drew laughter from children. The shows were entertainment, but they also carried a message about how these birds live in the wild, and why many of them are in danger.

That conservation work became more important over the decades. Behind the public paths, the park ran breeding programmes for threatened species, especially birds from Southeast Asia. Keepers hatched eggs, raised chicks by hand when needed, and studied how rare birds feed, nest, and grow. Much of this work happened quietly, out of sight. Visitors saw the colourful birds; few saw the careful labour that kept some species alive.

So why did it close? Over time, the park's operators decided to bring Singapore's major wildlife parks together in one place. Mandai already held the zoo, the Night Safari, and the river park. Moving the birds there meant newer facilities and shared expertise. The move itself was a huge task. Thousands of birds had to be caught, checked by vets, and carried across the island with great care.

For many people in Jurong, the closing was emotional. This park had been part of the neighbourhood for half a century. Parents who had visited as children brought their own children for one last walk. People took photographs at the entrance and in front of the falls. The birds still live on in Mandai, but the hill in Jurong lost a voice it had known for a lifetime.

If you are here now, look around you. The industrial district that this park was built to soften is still at work. You may hear traffic, or see cranes and factory roofs on the horizon. Nearby, Jurong Hill still rises with its trees and quiet paths. The green, damp air that once suited thousands of tropical birds is the same air you are breathing now.

As you walk away, keep your ears open. Mynas, sunbirds, and other wild birds still move through the trees of western Singapore. They were never part of any collection. They simply live here, as birds did long before 1971. In a way, the hill has returned to them. Listen for their calls, feel the heat on your skin, and remember the waterfall that once roared on this slope.