Beautiful Lake Apex is a 10-minute-jog away from our house. The first time I went there, it reminded me of Punggol Park, which was also about 10-minute-jog away from where I used to stay and it also has a big waterbody. They are almost about the same size too. 

However, Lake Apex is much more wonderful because it has populations of wild bird species within the park- imagine a mini Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve within Punggol Park- something like that. Or imagine jogging along the path and purple swamp hens keep crossing your path! 

When I first saw the birds in Lake Apex, it inspired me to imagine Punggol Park to be like this as well, which is quite an appropriate idea as Sungei Serangoon area used to be where thousands of migratory birds feed and rest before we reclaimed large area of swamps there (and now we are 'killing' the rivers).

Then, I jogged nearer to the area where hundreds of water birds such as ibises, herons, comorants and spoonbills were nesting or congregating and started to smell the birds in the air and see the bird dribbles on the walking path.... I know this vision of a Bird Sanctuary within our housing estate will never be realised. What more with bird flu paranoia.  

Already, when we make our streetscape a bit "wilder", such as planting clumps of lemon grass in central dividers, some people think rape cases will incease (*faint*). This is of course an extreme example (but it's true that someone did make these comments, no bluff), but it will be interesting to see how we do the project to make our canals river-like again (seems like every city need to go through this process: river > canal > river?). Anyway, "no fish prawn also good" lah...

Here are more pixs of Lake Apex:

This is the "more park" area of Lake Apex, where a group of fat noisy geese is used to being fed by park visitors. I thought they "belongs" to the park, like our swans in our botanic gardens, and I was wondering where they were one day when I didn't see them. I later learnt they are wild birds. They are non-natives, probably realeased into the wild by some people.

And this Australian white ibis knows it isn't as cute as the geese to attract human food, so it tries to steal some of their food (I still hate them for reducing themselves to eating garbage and left-over food on tables in the city).

Self-propel scooters- a popular play equipment in the park. I tried it once, and no, I didn't break it.   

One end of the walking path goes under the lake! I almost jogged right into the water when I was looking at two wood duck with their six little duckling at the same time! 

I brought Weiling and Robin to Lake Apex too. Here's one of the proofs (there were many) that they were working and not on holiday.