JUNIOR EDITION: Flying Fancies; Educational Trip To KL Bird Park

by Jayden Lum Jun Yi, Class of 2019

This year on 7th March 2014, the Year 6 pupils from Cempaka Damansara were taken to visit Taman Burung Kuala Lumpur. We were given group assignments which covered Maths, Science, English, Bahasa, and ICT, by our teachers and were divided into groups of five for the assignment.

Photo Credit : En Syariz

We took a bus to the bird park in the morning and all of us were very excited on the way there - the atmosphere in the bus was nothing short of electric. Before the bus even stopped we could see a peacock on a tall fence with beautiful blue and purple feathers and a blue crown. The sight of the peacock got us even more excited and we could not wait to alight the bus and get into the park.

The inside of the bird park had a lot of lush greenery and looked like a tropical wonderland. The whole area was fenced up as high as a 3-storey building to prevent birds of prey and others from escaping from the bird park. It was extremely large, as big as 5 football fields. The attractions inside included many bird exhibitions such as owl cages, mandarin duck ponds, pelican and milky stork ponds, birds of prey cages, Hornbill Park, Flamingo Pond, Bird Gallery, Bird Education Centre, Ostrich Sanctuary, Southern Cassowary Sanctuary, Love Aviary, Bul Bul Land and many more. Besides the extensive bird exhibitions, there were also marvellous, manmade waterfalls, a bird show area, Egg Incubation Room and Nursery and a building filled with the history of birds building. 

There was a guide who showed us around the bird park and he told us all about the birds that we've never heard of or seen before. Some birds were as colourful as a rainbow, (especially in the World of Parrots exhibition!) some were bigger then my entire arm and others were hardly the size of my palm. The few birds that we recognised were barn owls, the emus, pheasants, an ostrich and many more. 

Photo Credit : En Syariz

Personally the birds that interested me the most were the ostriches and the parrots. The parrots could mimic us and we had fun making up funny noises for them to mimic. We also fed them small cups of milk. They were very beautiful and colourful and had crowns on their heads.

The ostriches were magnificent because they were the largest birds at the bird park. Their feathers looked like hair and they had long, scrawny necks that were not proportional to their bodies. They are flightless birds and despite their size are the fastest running birds on the planet, as a result of the need to run very fast to escape from predators and danger. We were given a chance to feed them vegetable leaves. Then we went to the Hornbill Restaurant to eat lunch.

After lunch, we started focusing on our assignments. Though working in a group was a new concept to us and initially it was like herding cats, we took the bull by the horns. My group observed the behaviour of two birds for Science. We surveyed 206 people for Maths. Each of us also gathered information about birds of our choice and used them to fill up the worksheet for English. We were also tasked to write an autobiography of a bird of our choice for Bahasa Malaysia once we got home. Finally, we were required to combine a part of everything to create a keynote summary presentation for ICT at school two weeks after. It was hard work but we relished the challenge thrown to us.

Photo Credit : En Syariz

Once we were satisfied and had acquired the data needed, we went to the bird amphitheatre to watch a bird show. We were really impressed by the tricks that the well-trained birds could do.

We returned to Cempaka Damansara in the afternoon and went home, exhausted but happy. We had a whale of a time. Looking back, the educational trip taught us to build bridges among our group members in order to get our assignments done. It also taught us to go with the flow when needed and that all things are difficult before they are easy, and finally showed us the beauty of nature in all its magnificence. Despite the hard work, all of us are already eager at the next educational trip.