Secondary school teacher’s love for animals turns into action as she rescues injured birds.
By: Tung Jing Qi
Ms Huang Ning Xin’s house resembles a mini zoo: as she refills her pets’ water bowls, her rescued crow waddles around her house, occasionally perching on her head, and her cats and dog lazily strolls around her living room.
For the past 10 years, Ms Huang Ning Xin has been rescuing injured birds and nursing them back to health. The 29-year-old science teacher’s bird rescue journey started when her parents took in an already injured baby Javan Mynah who was about to be attacked again by a crow, and tried to nurse it back to health.
It’s almost as if it was Ms Huang’s destiny to become a bird whisperer: ever since her first encounter with that baby Javan Mynah, she has been spotting injured birds constantly and nursing them back to health.
Ms Huang, with her adopted dog and two stray cats that she took in, is evidently an animal lover. However, she did not intentionally choose the road of a bird rescuer.
“I didn’t choose birds though, I found them and took care of them, and eventually it became an expertise”, says Ms Huang, while the crow she rescued six months ago waddled by her feet.
Out of almost 40 birds that she has tried to rescue, only 10 managed to survive. Ms Huang feels that she “shouldn’t let their deaths go into vain”, and uses these deaths as learning experiences to help other birds.
Married without children, Ms Huang’s motherly tough love can be felt when she interacts with her two currently rescued birds. She refuses to hand-feed them, and instead scatters their food on the floor, trusting that the little critters will find their food.
After she started teaching in school, word spread among her colleagues and students that she is a saviour to the little feathered creatures, and the Biology teacher began to receive calls about injured birds from them.
Ms Huang sometimes brings the feathered creatures to school for her students to observe, and posts about her bird rescue encounters on her personal Instagram as well.
The bird whisperer has not only been teaching her students the ways of science, but also the importance of embracing nature.
Having found a nest of abandoned baby birds huddled together lying helplessly on the ground under a tree outside the hospital building at National University Hospital (NUH), Ines Pang, an ex-student of Ms Huang, immediately called her for help.
Ms Huang then rushed down to NUH with her husband to check on the baby birds, which they eventually decided to build a makeshift nest for, at the place where they were found.
“It’s quite touching to see that she’d go out of her way to help an injured bird”, states Pang, who feels that Ms Huang has made her feel more empathetic towards the bird community.
However, the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (ACRES) do not agree with Ms Huang’s rescuing efforts.
“It’s best to just leave it to the professionals,” says Anbu, a rescue worker at ACRES, who further explains that these birds may have special dietary requirements, or may not even need rescuing. They advise the public to give them a call if they find any injured birds, for them to assess the situation.
Ms Huang usually documents her bird rescue journey on social media. However, ACRES says that “this nonsense actually affects the birds a lot”, and they hope that the public will not take videos of themselves interacting with birds.
Having volunteered with Nature Society, Ms Huang has also been invited as a guest speaker to speak at a year-end symposium to the Gifted Education Programme (GEP) children about human wildlife conflict.
However, both ACRES and Ms Huang feel that bird culling is a cruel method that should not be used to stop the overpopulation of the feathered creatures, and that public awareness and education is important.
Anbu says that “Current culling methods are very inhumane and cruel.”
“To me, culling is like firefighting. It’s more meaningful to prevent fire.” Ms Huang, who believes that education is key to prevent culling.
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