The Last Wild Neighbours Of Oculus House

A personal farewell to the forest behind my garden

All photographs in this essay were made from my garden at Oculus House, Taman Seputeh.

The day the forest falls
There are some neighbours who knock on your door. Others never need to. They arrive quietly, without invitation, and make themselves at home. For the past six years, mine have come on wings, in feathers, scales and flashes of colour. They have appeared in my garden at dawn, perched on branches outside my windows, bathed in my pond, and, on occasion, wandered right into my house.

I have photographed them all from the sanctuary of my own garden.

Soon, I fear, there will be no forest for them to return to.
Behind Oculus House lies a 18 acres patch of forest in the heart of Taman Seputeh. It is easy, from the surrounding city, to think of such a place as merely an undeveloped piece of land. To me it has never been that. It has been a living world — green, noisy, secretive and endlessly surprising — and, for six extraordinary years, I have had the privilege of watching that world from my own home.
That world is now living on borrowed time. The forest is destined to make way for six blocks of high-rise condominiums. When the bulldozers arrive, the trees will fall, the undergrowth will disappear and the creatures I have come to know as my wild neighbours will be displaced.

I already know what I will feel when that day comes.

I will weep.

A love affair with Taman Seputeh

My attachment to Taman Seputeh goes back much further than Oculus House. I first came to live here in 1975. Over the years I moved in and out of Taman Seputeh five times, yet somehow I always found my way back. Perhaps that says everything about the place and something about me: I have always had a special love for this corner of Kuala Lumpur.
Eventually I was fortunate enough to build the home I had dreamed of. In November 2019, I moved into Oculus House in Seputeh Heights. The house went on to receive the PAM Gold Award for Best Single Residential Building in 2023, an honour I am proud of. But the award is not what has made this house precious to me.
What made it precious was what I discovered behind it.
A forest.

For more about Oculus House: Oculus House video

From my garden I could look into a world that seemed improbably wild for a place surrounded by a growing city. Birds moved through the trees as if the city did not exist. Some came only briefly. Others returned often enough that I began to anticipate their visits. I watched their habits, their movements, their seasons. I learned to keep a camera within reach.

And slowly, without my quite realizing it, photography became a way of keeping company with them.

My garden became a window into the wild

The photographs that follow are more than a record of bird species. They are fragments of a relationship — moments when the wild crossed the invisible boundary between forest and home and allowed me to witness it.

There were elegant visitors, noisy visitors, unexpected visitors and a few that demanded considerably more attention than others. A White-throated Kingfisher became such a regular presence that I built a pond especially for it, replenishing the fish from time to time. One morning, after a heavy storm, a Brahminy Kite arrived soaked through and simply sat in my garden to dry itself in the sun.

And then there was the morning I found a Reticulated Python in the garden.
These encounters have given me a kind of happiness that is difficult to explain to someone who has not experienced it. There is a particular pleasure in sitting quietly in your own home and suddenly realizing that, just a few metres away, a wild creature is going about its life.

No cage. No enclosure. No zoo.

Just a forest, a garden, and a moment of trust.

The birds I was lucky enough to meet :

Pink-necked Green Pigeon — one of the gentle, familiar visitors that made the forest behind my garden feel like an extension of home.

Pink-necked Green Pigeon — in perfect with the tropical bloom.

Black-throated Sunbird — small, quick and easily missed, yet full of life when it appeared among the garden foliage.

Banded Woodpecker — a reminder that even the trunks and branches around my garden were part of a much larger living community.

Asian Glossy Starling — one of the many birds that brought movement and colour to the trees behind Oculus House.

Asian Glossy Starling — another fleeting view of a familiar forest neighbour.

Asian glossy starling – The family tree. Adult and juvenile gather on the bare branches, the juveniles’ streaked plumage contrasting with the glossy adults and their brilliant red eyes.

Blue-throated Bee-eater — a flash of colour and motion against the green.

Crested Serpent Eagle — a magnificent visitor whose presence made the small forest behind my house feel wonderfully wild.

Crested goshawk – takes flight, talons poised for action.

Black-tighed falconet – small in stature, fierce in spirit.

Black-naped Oriole — bright against the branches, and impossible not to notice when it appeared.

Yellow-vented Bulbul — one of the more familiar garden visitors, photographed in a quiet moment.

Yellow vented bubul – A yellow vented bubul tends to its hungry chicks, their brilliant red mouths signaling eagerly for the next meal.

Black napped oriole – Feeding on the fruit I left in the hollow of the tree trunk.

Common Iora – Common woodland bird in Malaysia

Asian Glossy Starling — juvenile. The forest did not merely bring birds to my garden; it brought different stages of their lives.

Blue-throated Bee-eater — juvenile. A young visitor, and a reminder that this forest is habitat, not merely scenery.

Blue-throated Bee-eater — juvenile. Another glimpse of the younger generation among the wild neighbours of Oculus House

Barred ground dove – loosening its feathers to take in the cool morning breeze

Common Myna — another everyday neighbour in the remarkable community of birds around my home.

Red Junglefowl — male. To encounter a wild junglefowl so close to home was one of the pleasures of living beside this forest.

Oriental Dollarbird — another species I was able to photograph from the garden, adding to the extraordinary variety of my wild neighbours.

White-throated Kingfisher — feeding fish from my pond. I built the pond specifically for this kingfisher and regularly replenished it with fish.

White-throated Kingfisher — landing on my garden perch, seen from behind. By then, its visits had become something I looked forward to.

Brahminy Kite — drying in the sun after a heavy morning storm, its feathers still soaked. Even a storm could turn into a memorable encounter.

Flameback Woodpecker — female. Another beautiful resident of the forest that I was privileged to photograph from home.

Coppersmith barbet – a steady stare from a weathered perch.

Magpie robin – Feeding on my bird feed station. The container at the top is for the worms that I fill every morning.

Reticulated Python — discovered one morning in my garden. I caught it and moved it to a safer location far away from the city, hoping it would find a more secure home.

When the silence comes

For six years, I have been extraordinarily lucky. I have lived in a house I dreamed of building, in a part of Taman Seputeh I have loved since 1975, with a eighteen-acre forest at my doorstep. I have watched birds arrive and depart, built a pond for a kingfisher, photographed creatures I never expected to find in a city garden, and shared my home — however briefly — with wild neighbours who owed me nothing.
I know that progress has its own momentum. I know that buildings will rise where trees once stood. But knowing this does not make the loss easier.

Because when the bulldozers come, they will not simply be clearing a piece of land.

They will be erasing a living world.
The trees will go first. Then the branches where the birds rested. The cover where they nested. The places where they hunted, fed and sheltered. The paths through the undergrowth. The quiet corners where a creature could disappear from sight. And the green view from my garden will be replaced by concrete, glass and walls.
Perhaps some of these birds will find somewhere else. Perhaps some will not.

What I know is that I will remember them.
I will remember the Pink-necked Green Pigeon lifting into the air. The sudden brilliance of a bee-eater. The cry of an eagle overhead. The kingfisher waiting beside the pond I built for it. The kite drying its wings after the storm. The woodpecker working its way along a tree. The python appearing one morning as though the forest itself had come to pay me a visit.
These photographs are my way of saying thank you.

Thank you for the mornings. Thank you for the surprises. Thank you for the privilege of watching wild lives unfold from my own garden.

And when the day finally comes — when the engines start, the bulldozers move in and the forest begins to disappear — I know there will be tears in my eyes.

Not only because I am losing a view.

But because I am losing my neighbours.
For six years, they came to my garden.

For six years, they let me share their world.

I hope these photographs will allow that world to live on, even after the forest is gone.
From my garden at Oculus House, Seputeh Heights, Taman Seputeh, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Captain Sim Yong Wah amn
6 October 2026

What people talk 8 Comments

06/10/2026 Author Jayanthi krishnan

It is very sad. I too will the birds who come daily to eat in my garden. Their habit will be destroyed. I hope you will space for them to still come from the forests in front of my house. Thank you. Brautiful write up wonderful pictures.

06/10/2026 Author Kenneth chim

Beautiful 😍 I am also a longtime resident of Seputeh. I will try to fight this. I believe we can fight this. We must fight this senseless destruction.

06/10/2026 Author colonel Allen Lai (rtd)

hi Capt Sim insalute and envy you great sharing love your neighbourhood and neighbours

06/10/2026 Author Biby Chow

Hi Capt. Sim. I’m so sorry to hear this news that you’ll be losing that patch of forest. We have been able to enjoy some of your most amazing photos because of this forest. I suppose living in an ever expanding city, it shouldn’t be a surprise, but, like you said, that doesn’t make it easier to accept. I totally understand your sense of loss because I live in a rather wild area myself. Condominium are springing up around us, too. We have seen increased sightings of wild boars, which is not necessarily a good thing, because that probably means the loss of their habitat. I guess it one of those inevitable outcomes of ‘progress’ thay we just have to live with.

06/10/2026 Author Pauline

Captain Sim, thank you for sharing these amazing photos of wildlife, just from your backyard. It is your privilege to be able to witness within your compound. I certainly be very heartbroken when all these are taken away!

06/10/2026 Author Chandra Mohan

Thank you for sharing something that was painstakingly and beautifully captured and so well articulated.

We can only hope that it falls on the right ears.

Again, Taman Seputeh is not the only place, o drove along Jalan Bangsar and bulldozers at work where the forest at Bkt Perseketuan once stood.

06/10/2026 Author Greg dall

I cry to think that this precious last ‘green lung’ in Taman Seputeh will become another victim of excessive overdevelopment!

08/10/2026 Author Yusuf Hashim

Beautiful write up, Captain Sim. I feel with you, because I have the same jungle patch behind my home. I have seen many of the same birds behind my house, including the Brahmini kite, the wild cockerel, the pythons, iguanas and ….monkeys. Zillions of monkeys. They raid my rambutan, cempedak, mangosteens, nangka and I decided to cut down both my durian trees because over the 15 years that I had those trees, I managed to taste only 2 fruits. The rest were damaged by squirrels and monkeys long before the ripen. I also have spitting cobras. Sometimes one or two would come into the house, and I’ve had to call the bomba to remove them. I got so fed up that I’ve told myself to let them have the fruits in my garden. The Duku langsat hasnt fruited yet. When it does, I’ll also let those creatures have them. Theres only me an Sharifah in the house, and if we do want to eat those fruits, we’ve decided to simply go and buy them from the supermarket.
The patch of jungle has been there ever since we moved into this house 50 years ago. I know it belongs to the water dept, and last year, I saw a survey team marking out the area. No doubt one day there will also be apartments sprouting there. Its presently the highest hill in Section 16, and the only other hill in PJ is Bukit Gasing.
I grieve with you in the impending loss of your little jungle in the city.
You’ve inspired me to set up a camera on a tripod wit a 600 mm lens at the back window of my house. I will point the camera to try and captur as many of my wild neighbour as possible. I’ve been wanting to do that, but never got down to actually doing it.

Yusuf