A few shots from the past year

As I head back to the UK next week for a while, here are some shots I haven't yet posted which I've taken at various places and times in the past year.



Here's an in-hand comparison of Blue and Malayan Whistling Thrush to give you an idea of the difference in size!

These other pics are either of breeding birds or birds that I felt would be jeopardized if the site were widely publicized.





Male Chestnut-naped Forktail



Female Chestnut-naped Forktail. All digiscoped.





Male Rhinoceros Hornbill - also digiscoped.











Male Rusty-naped Pitta - the rarely-photographed endemic 'deborah' race.

12th November 2009: Bandar PERDA ricefields, Bukit Mertajam, mainland Penang

The sound of rain pouring onto the roof when I woke up before dawn wasn't an encouraging start, but I decided to press on anyway. By the time dawn arrived the sky was clearing encouragingly!



Sun rising over Bukit Mertajam.





Some Grey-headed Lapwings were still sleepy enough to allow a close approach for a change!



In a nearby field hundreds of egrets gathered for breakfast.



When you got your order it was time to move out ... fast!



Because there were always scroungers around hoping for a share!



As well as bullies who weren't so polite!



Found a quiet spot at last - time to enjoy!






















A moment to reflect!



Great Egrets ruled the roost till ... a Grey Heron arrived!






















Me and my shadow, part 1...



...and part 2!






















Even the Grey Heron got hassled!



Time to go.



The Brahminy Kites were also at the party - waiting for someone else to catch their breakfast for them!
























































Eels were their favourite, and any lucky angler faced the same problems as the egrets - hanging on to their catch long enough to enjoy it!



On the look out.



All of this was just the snacks before the main event of the day. As it got near to nine o'clock all the egrets queued up to wait for the tractor drivers to arrive and start ploughing.



In the quieter fields waders could still be found. Snipe always pose a stern identification challenge!



The very thin black loral line and bulging supercilium in front of the eye eliminates Common Snipe, and this is confirmed by the pattern of the lower scapulars, which show a buff fringe on both sides of the feathers, and the wing coverts, which lack a dark central line. The relatively short tail suggests this may be a Pintail rather than Swinhoe's Snipe, but without a clear view of the tail feathers it's impossible to be sure. So, like most of my snipe sightings, it has to go down as one or the other!



Some easier waders - Little Ringed Plover...



And a Long-toed Stint (first winter - as can be told by the white-fringed lesser coverts).



A sad sight at Bandar PERDA were the hundreds of meters of mist-nets strung up all over the paddyfields. This one had three live Ixobrychus bitterns in it - one Cinnamon and two Yellow. I managed to release two of them but had to kill the third as it was beyond saving. There were body parts of several other bitterns in the net. Locals put the nets up to catch Black-crowned Night Herons and Watercocks to eat, but the by-catch must be enormous. I disabled this particular net, but it would take a large operation to take down all the nets in the area. I have contacted the Wildlife Department, and they have said they will send a team there 'as soon as possible', so let's see what happens.



My main aim today was to see if there were any migrant raptors coming to feed at the ploughing. Frequent scanning eventually yielded a distant juvenile Greater Spotted Eagle being harassed by crows.



Bringing my rally-driving skills to the fore, with Hakim keeping an eye on the bird and me keeping both eyes on the road, we sped and bumped our way to a point where our path dissected that of the eagle, so that it was directly overhead. Nice!





We decided to cross over to the Kg Pertama fields to see what was happening there, pausing to photograph a juv Purple Heron and a Yellow Wagtail on the way.

A kobotor tractor was being attending by a small flock of hirundines, which included at least two probable Pale Martins.





























































































We watched another Greater Spotted Eagle - an adult this time - drift overhead, so decided to head back to the fields at Bandar PERDA.

We found a tractor ploughing near a small copse, which turned out to be a favourite spot for raptors to rest in the heat of the day.





There were at least three subadult Greater Spotted Eagles and one adult.



Here's the adult digiscoped at 60 x magnification!



This is probably the juv we saw earlier in the day.











It put on quite a show for us...



OK - that's probably close enough - starting to feel a little uncomfortable!







Phew! Evidently it decided we were not edible!



Something a little smaller - a Black-eared Kite to finish off with.

10th November 2009: Bandar PERDA ricefields, Bukit Mertajam, mainland Penang

Some pics from a short late afternoon visit before rain stopped play!



Couldn't resist this obliging Wood Sandpiper!



This female Pied Harrier was a new Penang bird for me.



In flight the very white underwing and rear body, and the greyish bases to the primaries are distinctive of female Pied.












































I found some tractors ploughing a field, and these are the pick of the Barn Swallows pictures I managed. No Red-rumped or Riparia martins among them today.



This one seemed to be managing OK without much of a tail.



And then the rain came! The flock of Pacific Golden Plovers came down in a field near the road and hunkered down.



The monsoon rains this year are exceptionally severe, so I guess they'd better get used to it!

31st Oct and 1st Nov 2009: Festival of Wings, Kuala Selangor Nature Park, Selangor

I attended the 7th Festival of Wings at Kuala Selangor Nature Park (KSNP) a couple of weekends ago.



In conjunction with the Festival, an official plaque announcing KSNP as part of the North-central Selangor Coast Important Bird Area (IBA) was unveiled by Elizabeth Wong - Selangor State Minister for Tourism, Consumer Affairs and the Environment.



People keeping out of the rain in the exhibition booths...



The delegation from BCST - (Left to right): Chaiwat, Benchapol, Ravee, Koses, Piyawan, Nonchaya and Gawin - with lots of interesting merchandise and those famous Thai smiles!



The team from Burung Indonesia - minta maaf guys - I lost the piece of paper where I wrote down your names - please write and remind me! They were really good at selling - I bought four of their superb T-shirts!



The Myanmar contingent (left to right): Aung Moe from the Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Association (BANCA) and San San Nwe, from the Nature and Wildlife Conservation Division of the Forest Department, and Simba Chan (ex Hong Kong, now with Birdlife Japan).



About half the Selangor Bird Group Committee are here!



There was some pretty impressive artwork being done on ... people's faces!



Our very own MNS BCC Waterbirds Group had an impressive display...



...put together with much hard work by Ang Teck Hin - here's the man himself!



Hey look - the sun! It was nice to see it at last on the second morning.

On the second afternoon, the exhibitors got a chance to take a break and do some birding - yay!



Hmm - so that's what they look like close up?!



The Burung Indonesia team checking out our Malaysian mangroves.



A rare chance to view the mudflats from the seaward side gave us plenty of views of hunting Lesser Adjutants (more aptly-named in Malay Burung Botak Kecil - Lesser Bald Bird!).







And a good opportunity for us to see at first hand the biological richness of the coastal mangrove-mudflat ecosystem - lots of fish, lots of cockles.



Have we got the message yet? MANGROVES AND MUDFLATS = MORE FOOD FOR BIRDS AND MORE RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE. Cut down the mangroves and we forfeit fisheries, coastal protection from storms and tsunamis, carbon sequestering and a host of other benefits.

Thanks to Raj and a host of assistants and volunteers for making this year's Festival of Wings yet another memorable event, despite the weather!

30th October 2009: Kampung Pertama and Kubang Semang, Penang

I made a short early morning visit to the rice-fields in a failed attempt to relocate the Temminck's Stint.





The stint field still held a few Wood Sandpipers.



And the field with Pacific Golden Plovers was still fully occupied.





I came across this Slaty-breasted Rail wandering along the road. I don't think it's a full adult.

With things otherwise quiet at Kampung Pertama, I decided to take the short drive across to the rice-fields on the other side of the highway at Kubang Semang.



There were more birds here as the fields are still being planted and there is more open mud and water. This shot shows a typical paddy-field vista. Wherever there is a man on his 'kobotor' preparing the field for the next planting, there you'll find flocks of egrets, terns and hirundines in attendance. The grey, fortress-like building in the background is a 'swiftlet hotel' - an increasingly commonly-encountered feature of the paddy-field landscape.







Some of the Barn Swallows following the kobotor. The 'gutturalis' race often shows a white throat and brown breastband in juvenile plumage, a feature not often alluded to in the literature available to me, and presenting a possible identification pitfall for the unwary.



A few Intermediate Egrets mingled with the much commoner Little and Cattle Egrets.






















This photo shows the proportional differences between Intermediate (front) and Cattle Egrets (back). The two species share the same bare part colours at this time of year.



Little Egrets typically show a pale whitish, pinkish, bluish or occasionally yellowish base to the lower mandible during the non-breeding season.



Another arriving.



The waders were in the quieter fields, and included a small flock of around 30 Curlew Sandpipers - mostly first winters.



The mantle and scapulars, one or two tertials and coverts are fresh non-breeding feathers (which look identical to adult non-breeding). I've shaded these purple, but you can also tell them in the 'undoctored' photo above by their greyer colouration and thin white fringing.

The remaining wing coverts are unmoulted, old juvenile feathers. These have largely faded and bleached so that little of the original juvenile pattern is still visible. Generally, the feathers which are most protected from the elements by the scapulars - typically the marginal and lesser coverts - and some inner median coverts (shaded yellow) are the feathers which remain least worn, so these are the most useful feathers for aging purposes. In the unshaded pic above, you can see that these feathers are darker, browner, and retain the (faded but visible) juvenile pattern.

Incidentally, note how short-billed this bird is. Perhaps it's a male.





Lesser and marginal coverts are usually hidden beneath the scapulars, but are sometimes exposed when the bird preens.



This one hasn't yet moulted its juv scapulars, so is much easier to age. From a distance, this bird will look darker and browner than the more advanced birds.



This bird, by contrast, can only be aged by taking a detailed look. You can just make out some juvenile lesser coverts peeking out beneath the scapulars at the 'top front' edge of the wing. The scapulars on this bird are covering almost all the wing coverts.



On this individual, only a few inner median coverts show the tell-tale dark subterminal 'arrowhead' marks which reveal that this is also a first winter bird.










































A first winter Black-winged Stilt. With Stilts, the intensity of the leg and iris-colour is an easy way to age them.



It's not often I get three Common Sandpipers in one shot. Don't ask me how to age them - they're really tough! Moving swiftly on...!



One of a small flock of Grey-headed Lapwings. These were exceedingly wary.



More Grey-headed Lapwings (and a Wood Sandpiper).



A study in simplicity - Wood Sandpiper and water.

29th October 2009: Kampung Pertama, mainland Penang

I spent the last couple of daylight hours at the ricefields today, and picked up a 'state tick' - the first Temminck's Stint I have seen in Penang!







There's not much you can say about Temminck's plumage-wise - they're just very plain grey above compared to Long-toed.



They have quite a distinctive unstreaked grey breast band.



And a feeding rhythm that might be described as sluggish, as the video shows.

I spent some time searching the Pacific Golden Plover flock for the colour-banded bird I released 9 days ago, but the birds had moved into a new field with much more vegetation, making it much more difficult to see legs, so I didn't succeed.





I was surprised to see a cracking breeding plumaged male in the flock. It was the only bird with any breeding feathers at all, and it still appeared to be in pristine condition. Very strange!

25th October 2009: North Kedah coast

An afternoon trip up to Alor Setar to check out some 'new' wader habitat (new to me!) led to a couple of good sightings in the local context.



Black-tailed Godwits are Near Threatened globally, and have a Flyway population of only about 160,000 (the 'melanuroides' race). They are a scarce bird on the west coast, especially in the north, so this was a good find. Apart from being much longer-legged than Bar-tailed Godwit, once useful difference is the prominence of the supercilium - more obvious over and in front of the eye on Black-tailed; clearer behind the eye on Bar-tailed.



There were quite decent numbers of terns feeding on the shoreline - mostly Whiskered with a few White-winged.





They were catching small crabs.





Common Redshanks flew out to feed on the falling tide after roosting in the rice-fields.



Greater Coucal is a common bird which is difficult to photograph well. I caught this one munching on a grasshopper.



We came across another concentration of waders a bit further north, but the sinking sun made viewing conditions less than ideal!





We were very pleased to pick out this Grey Plover in the late afternoon. This is only my second west coast sighting north of Selangor. Noticeably thicker-set than Pacific Golden when on the mud, and showing its characteristic black 'armpits' as it flew away into the setting sun.