14th May, 2008: Gunung Jerai, Kedah

Gunung Jerai is an isolated limestone outcrop on the coast of Kedah. It contains the 8,500ha Sungai Teroi Forest Reserve, which is mainly lowland dipterocarp forest, giving way to montane forest with conifers, pitcher plants and rhododendron-like shrubs near the peak (1200m). Tan Choo Eng, James Ooi and I spent a few hours there late morning and recorded a fairly average list of 23 bird species.




Cream-vented Bulbuls were among the six bulbul species we recorded.


Orthetrum sabina are particularly abundant on the mountain. I also saw Tramea transmarina and an unidentified Gomphid dragonfly.


What an ugly creature! No, not the frog, which, I think, is Rana blythii or Malayan Giant Frog, but the person who decided the best place for their rubbish after their picnic was this pristine mountain stream. The frog is apparently edible and and a popular menu item in Chinese restaurants!






















This bat wasn't on Gunung Jerai, but roosting in an abandoned building at Bedong. I think it might be a Megaderma sp (or False Vampire in English) but I could be completely wrong. Any help on this and the frog would be appreciated!

Review and Field Trials of Omicron Estavia 10 x 42 Aspherics WP and Minox BL 10x42 BR Binoculars

Recently, I field tested the Omicron Estavia 10X42 Aspherics WP binocular. I compared this with my own Minox BL 10x42 BR binocular.

Both models are quite comparable in terms of specifications, as can be seen from the summary table below, gleaned from the respective websites http://www.omicron-optics.com/b-estarvia10X42.htm and http://www.minox.com/index.php?id=676&L=1 :



Both models would be contenders for anyone considering buying their first pair of ‘serious’ birding binoculars, particularly if the top of the range models are out of range price-wise. Both are also comparably priced. So how do they stack up in the field?

Optical Quality
Both binoculars give a clear image, but I found that the Omicron provided slightly greater sharpness, greater contrast and more intense colours, which helped to make details clearer than the Minox. Slight chromatic aberration was visible on vertical edges with the Minox model, while I couldn’t see any through the Omicron.

Colour rendition was good in both models, with the Minox giving a slight bluish cast and the Omicron more or less neutral.

When comparing clarity across the whole image, I found both to be sharp at the center, but the Omicron gave a significantly sharper image toward the edges. This was offset, however, by the Omicron having more of a double image effect at the edges, making the field of view seem narrower than it actually was. Although not as sharp, the Minox edge image was not obscured by any double image effects.

Ease of Viewing
When panning, I found there were no unpleasant side effects or distortion in either model, but when panning from near to distant objects, I found the Omicron easier to use due to the greater depth of field, which meant there was less need to refocus than with the Minox.

Technical properties and usability
I found there to be no actual difference in the field of view for both models, but, as mentioned above, the double image effect at the edge of the Omicron made the field of view feel rather tube-like and narrow. The Omicron had a slightly better depth of field than the Minox, while the close focusing limit seemed identical in both models, and easily close enough to be useful for examining butterflies or other insects. The focusing wheel on the Omicron was slightly stiffer than the Minox, but this did not significantly affect performance. The eyecups on the Minox slide out with a smooth twist. As a glasses-wearer, I find that one or both eyecups tend to twist out by themselves, which can result in a frustratingly distorted view on occasion. The Omicron eyecups twist out with three clicks, which I would imagine makes them less prone to twisting out by themselves.

One unique feature of the Omicron as far as technical properties are concerned is their latest ClearVue hydrophobic coating (a special water,grease and oil repellent coating ) which is normally found on certain higher priced binoculars.

Both binoculars seem well-balanced and are pleasant to hold, the Omicron being slightly heavier and longer-barreled. I found the weight difference barely noticeable in the field. The strap that comes with the binoculars is a little narrow and unpadded on the Omicron, whereas the Minox has a broader, padded strap. The fastening arrangement of the strap is the same on both models, and I have found, with the Minox, that the strap occasionally comes loose at one end, which could be an expensive failing, resulting in the binoculars falling to the ground or worse. Most recently, the strap came adrift while I was seawatching in deep sea from a boat. Happily I became aware that my binoculars were no longer securely attached to my person before they disappeared into the depths! This is one design failing that I would like to see improved in future models from both Minox and Omicron. It is good news that the current strap will be replaced by a broader and comfortable neoprene strap in the Omicron from June 2008 onwards.

A rainguard and objective lens caps are provided with both Omicron and Minox . The latter clip onto the strap, but unfortunately, unclip rather easily, with the result that they tend to be easily lost. I found the rainguard on the Omicron rather tight and difficult to put on and take off quickly, an essential requirement for birders, while the Minox rainguard was rather better designed. I understand that a larger, looser fit rainguard similar in design to that supplied by Minox is also available from Omicron. Each also comes in a soft case, fastened by a sturdy plastic clip on the Minox, but a rather cheap and not so cheerful patch of Velcro with the Omicron.

Summary
Both the Minox and Omicron 10 x 42s are excellent mid-range binoculars, providing superb value for money and optical quality that will easily meet the needs of discerning birders. Their field performance is close enough that I would recommend handling both before making a final choice, since individual needs differ. Personally, I found the Omicron shaded the Minox optically in terms of clarity and sharpness of image, the only significant failing of the former being the slight double imaging at the edge of the image. The Minox comes with a slightly better quality batch of accessories (rainguard, lens caps, strap, etc). Nevertheless, the differences were sufficiently small that I did not feel a compelling urge to exchange my Minox for Omicron, and both are excellent value for money.

Both binoculars are also available with 8x42 specifications.

7th May 2008: Air Hitam Dalam, Penang

I spent a few hours here this morning in the hope of catching up with Streak-breasted Woodpecker. There were several 'Picus' woodpeckers drumming, and I had brief views of a female, but nothing conclusive. But here were other birds around - lots of Abbott's Babblers and Asian Paradise Flycatchers, a late Arctic Warbler and a calling Mangrove Pitta.


Mum and baby. The Spotted Wood Owls continue to breed here, despite the ever-shrinking acreage of suitable habitat.




A single Black-and-Red Broadbill spend a short while hawking insects within view, before melting back into the undergrowth.




This male Mangrove Blue Flycatcher was singing away and was quite confiding. The illustration in Robson's Birds of South-east Asia doesn't show the dark chin or the pale orange vent, but Lekagul and Round's Birds of Thailand mentions that the chin is black, so I am assuming, based on the habitat, that this is a Mangrove Blue.

1st May 2008: Ulu Paip

Not a birding trip, more of a family day out, but we saw a number of interesting bits and pieces!


While having breakfast by the roadside, we noticed a number of white damselflies swarming around a lotus flower. We identified them as Copera marginipes. This one is a juvenile.


And here's an adult. Let me know if I've misidentified these please!






















This is the waterfall we always head for. There's a nice pool at the base where the kids can play, and we always seem to have it to ourselves!


We found two juvenile Hillstream Soft-shelled Turtles (Dogania subplana for short!) and caught this one to have a closer look.






















The neck was as long as its body and it was quite an impressive climber!



After we released it, it continued to hang around on the offchance of any titbits we might throw to it!


We found this dragonfly larva when it tried to take a bite out of my wife's leg! I was amazed to learn that dragonflies spend by far the largest part of their lives in this larval form - up to 4 years or more, compared to only around 2 months as a winged adult.


One more damsel - this time Prodasineura laidlawii. The one I'd really like to see is Mortonagrion arthuri. My book (the wonderful "Dragonflies of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore") provides the following intriguing detail: "known from a single discoloured specimen from a garden in Butterworth, collected by Arthur Wheeler at the age of four." I can just picture Grandpa Wheeler at the age of 85 telling his grandchildren - "Eee, when I was four years old I found a new dragonfly for science." "Sure you did Grandpa!"

19th April 2008: Kapar Ash Ponds

I met up with Simon Cockayne and Piet Opstaele who came on a marathon daytrip up from Singapore in the hope of seeing at least one of 'the Big Three' (Asian Dowitcher, Nordmann's Greenshank and Spoon-billed Sandpiper).


Numbers of birds were well down on a couple of weeks ago, but we estimated that there were still well over three thousand birds present. Some of the same individuals that I saw on April 6-7th were still around, such as the Little Stint, one of the Dunlin and both Sanderlings.



Most of the remaining sand plovers seemed to be non-breeders.


The Little Stint (front right) was among the very few Red-neckeds remaining.


Simon gets his bird! Fortunately the Nordmann's Greenshanks saved the day, with 12 being present.


Birds of a feather...! The zoning of related species was very evident - Whimbrels and godwits in one group, Curlew Sandpipers in another, and Great and Red Knot in a third.


There were a number of 'phaeopus' race type Whimbrel (with white back and underwing coverts) among the predominant 'variegatus' birds. Here's one (upper near bird).



A Gull-billed Tern flies overhead toward dusk.


Just before dark we went to look at the second ashpond, which I had not visited before. Having seen no Terek Sandpipers on the main pond, we were surprised to find over 500 here, as well as good numbers of Redshanks and smaller calidrids. A place to check in the future clearly!

15th April, 2008: Pelagic trip off Tanjung Dawai, Kedah (Part 2)

Terns in the rain! Luckily, we were able to stay reasonably dry.


Bridled Terns were the most numerous after the Common Terns. Their brown upperparts makes them easy to identify. These are usually deep sea terns, and are very rarely seen from the mainland.


Adults have fairly uniform brown upperparts, and a blackish crown with a white eyebrow extending to behind the eye.


First year birds were more numerous than adults. The white fringes to the mantle were variable in extent, but could make them appear to have a white or pale grey mantle in flight.


On board a piece of Nypah palm trunk. Typically, Bridled Terns preferred to sit on some floating debris, whereas Common Terns seemed to prefer sitting in the water.



I'd like a shake please! Trying to get rid of waterlogging in a rain storm.






















Something a bit special! The second Aleutian tern for the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The first was a 1st year bird, but this one was a fine adult.


It didn't join the other terns but just flew straight past. Here's a good view of the distinctive dark secondary bar on the underwing.


On the upperwing, there's a dark wedge formed by the outer primaries (similar to Common Tern), but then a pale wedge on the inner primaries, contrasting with the slightly darker secondaries. Another thing I noticed about this bird was that it held its head up, looking straight ahead, unlike the Common Terns, which usually look down toward the water surface.



Flashing those black secondaries. You beauty!


Shaking some water off. Aleutian Tern seems much slighter than Common Tern, with a more slender bill.


Later in the day, I was surprised by a peculiar waderlike call - 'tree-ree-reep' - very different from the terns around the stern of the boat. I looked up to see this Aleutian Tern flying past at height. Not a great pic, but identifiable due to the pale wedge on the inner primaries. I saw it better than this, but was too busy trying to attract Choo Eng's attention to get better pictures. He missed both birds. Ouch!


Ghostly beauty! A Black-naped Tern joined the melee of terns at the nets. We saw a possible breeding colony of these terns in the distance, but only a couple came this close all day.



The underside of the wing appeared yellowish. Not sure if this was the effect of blood vessels showing through the translucent plumage, or genuine pigmentation.


We were hoping for a tropicbird, but this was as close as we got to one!



Long-tailed Skua is classified as a vagrant to Malaysian waters, but perhaps that should be amended to 'under-recorded'. We had 12 sightings during the day, including a flock of 4 birds. It is probable that we saw some birds on repeated occasions. Nevertheless, we estimated that there were probably 4 - 8 birds involved. This is a juvenile.



A particularly pale morph juvenile.


The same bird flying away. Notice the strongly barred uppertail coverts.



Settled on the water. Almost all the skuas we saw were initially sitting on the sea, and then flew and settled further away when flushed by our boat.


An adult trying to swallow a fish.


Notice how plain the wings are. Other skua species show prominent white flashes at the bases of the primaries. The long central tail feathers are not yet fully grown. All the adults we saw had partially grown central tail feathers.


A different adult. The smokey grey-brown upperparts contrasting with darker secondaries is characteristic of adult Long-tailed. Other skuas are much darker and browner.


The clean whitish throat and breast below the black cap, and the dusky rear body are also good pointers for adult Long-tailed.


This picture shows how narrow-based the wings are.


We also had 6 sightings of Pomarine Skuas, including a flock of 3 adults. At least 4 individuals were involved. Note how stocky this bird is compared to the Long-tailed. The thick breastband and scaly flanks, the prominent underwing flash and spoon-shaped twisted central tail feathers also help identification.


A bit blurred, but this gives a good impression of the difference in size and structure between Long-tailed (right) and Pomarine Skuas. Surprisingly, the Long-tailed was seeing off the 'Pom'!



Two Pomarine Skuas on the water. The 'spoons' on the tail and the breastband help identify them.


The birds stayed with us till dark. A Long-tailed Skua followed the terns that were following us, but sadly my battery had died!


A golden end to a great day!


Heading for port at the end of a long day! After we docked, the crew still had to unload the boat and clean it out for the next day's fishing. You won't find me complaining about the cost of 'ikan bilis' again!

15th April, 2008: Pelagic trip off Tanjung Dawai, Kedah (Part 1)

Following the exploratory trip on the MV Amusement World last month, Tan Choo Eng and I decided to try another pelagic excursion; this time on a working ikan bilis (anchovy) boat.



We set off from Tanjung Dawai at about 7am, and spent the whole day a few kilometres offshore hunting for anchovies, returning at about 8.30pm. I got up at 3.30am and got to bed after midnight!


Setting out from the jetty in first light.






















The boat was a sturdy one, with about 30 crew, and functioned as a simple factory. The nets were laid and gathered at the front - sorry - bow, and the fish were processed at the stern.


Operations were directed from the bridge, where the skipper had a sonar to locate the anchovy shoals. Once one was located, he would steer the boat rapidly in a large circle to corral the fish into one area, then he went round once more to lay the net, with much hooting and banging on the deck to scare the fish into a tight ball. Sometimes one of the crew would jump into the water to make even more noise!


The skipper would also radio the other boats in the fleet to come and share the catch, and soon there would be 4 or 5 boats laying their nets.

All the noise was apparently the sign the terns were waiting for.Within minutes, a sea devoid of birds would become a boiling throng of several hundred terns. I would estimate up to a thousand at times.



Once the nets were laid, they would be slowly winched in, drawing the noose ever tighter around the fish, and also bringing the birds ever nearer!


In the gathering gloom of the approaching storm, the wind billowing the nets make this boat look some kind of weird sea monster.






















Gathering in the nets is very wet work!


The catch is scooped out using a smaller net.






















Next the fish are transferred via a chute to the back of the boat...



...where they are cooked and stacked in trays


As soon as the nets are arranged back on deck they are checked for holes and mended.




Times between locating shoals of fish were times to rest and also check out these two odd new crew members!






















Robson's Birds of South-east Asia was a big hit!



As were our bins!

The crew were very interested in and knowledgeable about the wildlife they see out there. They told us that there weren't 'many birds about' now compared to December - February. I was slightly incredulous at this, seeing the huge flocks of terns about, but they assured us that this was 'very few birds' compared to the winter months! They also told us about some all black birds with 'feet like ducks' that live on the sea in the winter. We guessed these might be cormorants. Worth checking out next winter.

I had an amusing conversation with one guy. I asked him if they ever saw whales, to which he replied: "Tak ada. Ibu yu hitam." I translated this in my mind as "No, is your mother black?" While I was still trying to make sense of this, Choo Eng came to the rescue. "I think he means Whale Sharks!" 'Yu' is the Malay word for shark, so 'Ibu yu hitam' literally means 'black mother shark'!

Anyway, what about the birds?



Overwhelmingly the commonest birds were Common Terns. These had us in quite a pickle for a while, as there was a bewildering variety of plumages. The adults looked quite unlike the western race I am familiar with in Europe. They had strikingly grey underparts, tinged pinkish or even purplish, mostly black bills and dark red feet. The tail streamers seemed rather long, and the upperparts quite pale, so I tried to make them into Roseate Terns for some time.


The blackish outer web of the longest tail streamer eliminates the possibility of Roseate, despite the superficially similar upperwing pattern.


The grey underparts had a pinkish or purplish tone to them.


These grey-bodied, black-billed birds are presumably the race 'longipennis'. They are pretty chunky, looking larger, heavier-billed and longer-tailed than the nominate race.


Much less common were a few birds with a red base to the bill, apparently shorter tail streamers, whiter underbody and weaker-looking bill. I wondered if these might be the 'tibetana' race.


Here's another one.


This appears to be a non-breeding plumaged adult, possibly 'longipennis'.






















There were also plenty of first year birds. Typically, these seemed to be midway through primary and secondary moult. The whitish areas in mid-wing seem to be caused by moulted lesser coverts exposing the pale bases of the median coverts, and this was a variable feature.



Here's one half way through primary and secondary moult, but without the white midwing patch caused by dropped lesser coverts.


This view shows the tail moult as well - the third from outermost pair of tail feathers are missing.


Hold on a second - gotta scratch!


Taking a break.


Back to work!



This looks like one of those photoshopped pictures showing a bird diving, but it's actually one shot of four birds!