20 June 2012: Penanti

Having left the folly of flycatcher-hunting, I dropped into Penanti en route home to check on the Oriental Pratincoles.

 One was standing sentinel on the access road and wasn't that interested in giving way to my vehicle!

  

Interesting to see that post-breeding moult has already begun - those slightly greeny-glossed scapulars, wing coverts and tertials are new, as are the darker feathers on the head. 

 

 

 

The adults were all just starting wing moult - the inner four or five primaries and their respective coverts had been replaced.

 

 

I could only see two juveniles - suggesting that the season hasn't been a good one. Both were just fledged. Sometimes pratincoles will raise a second brood after the first is fledged - wonder if this may happen here?

The inevitable Red-wattled Lapwings making their disapproval of my presence known! I was surprised to hear a Blue-winged Pitta calling not that far away in the scrub. However, it didn't want to play, and I was unsuccessful in luring it into view. While searching, I did spook a Red Junglefowl - another species I was surprised to find at this rather open location.

19th April 2011: At sea off Tanjung Dawai, Kedah

My first trip on the boat since 3rd Jan, but we're now entering the time of year when things get interesting, so I should be a more frequent passenger in the next couple of months!

















There was a bit of "vis mig" (visible migration) going on - a few Barn Swallows and one group of five Blue-tailed Bee-eaters travelling north over the sea. It may surprise you that butterflies and dragonflies are quite frequently seen migrating over the sea! I managed to snap this butterfly heading north, well out to sea!

Seabirds, though, were in surprisingly short supply, as were fish! We went several hours without seeing a single tern, unheard of at this time of year. Eventually, however, we connected with a few birds.











Two Common and two Bridled Terns shared a plank!
























The last to fly!

















Part of a roosting flock of Common Terns.


















We estimated not more than 300 Common Terns present today - far fewer than usual.


















Yet another Common Tern with a deformed bill!





































A lone fly-by Greater Crested Tern was a typical record.


















As was this brief sighting of a solitary Aleutian Tern.




















There was just one Pomarine Jaeger today, but a very fine one it was - an adult dark morph bird.



































Not very close unfortunately.

We saw at least six Long-tailed Jaegers.



















These are challenging to photograph in the harsh midday light. They never hang around, so we have to make the most of the brief opportunities that come our way.


















This subadult is in wing moult.




































I was interested to see that this bird had a double layer of inner secondaries! The new still-growing feathers are visible beneath the paler old ones, which project beyond the line of the trailing edge of the wing.










A Long-tailed Jaeger catching a meal. It zooms in on a Common Tern which has recently fed; harassing it until the fish is disgorged (2nd pic), whereupon the tern is left alone and the jaeger picks up and eats the fish in mid-air (pic 3). Seeing this performance repeated often, I wonder how this behaviour benefits the jaeger. It must surely take more energy to obtain a meal in this way than by simply catching a fish from the sea. Can anyone enlighten me why jaegers/skuas use this apparently uneconomical and energy-inefficient hunting strategy?



















A first year bird I think.


















An adult. Relatively few have full-length central tail feathers like this bird.

















Three adults together.





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he dark underwing and dusky rear half of the body are good field marks of adult Long-tailed.












A pale morph 'Pom' (left) and a Long-tailed for comparison. Note the difference in the pattern of pale areas on the body, and the dark secondaries contrasting strongly with the pale coverts on the Long-tailed. There's also a difference in size and structure which is more obvious in the field than on still photos; Pomarine being a much bigger, more heavyset species.

When it became obvious that fish were few and far between, our boat headed back to port early, which gave us a chance to look around the nearby flooded paddyfields and coastal scrub before dusk.

















There were small numbers of Pacific Golden Plovers and Oriental Pratincoles in the paddyfields. The latter were loafing around, but there were no signs of breeding in progress. All appeared to be in wing and tail moult.







































Quite a range of underwing colour, and also in extent of peach wash on the lower breast.




















































I was never conscious of being mobbed, but these birds did seem to want to 'check me out', so perhaps they are thinking of breeding.



































The secondaries show thin buff tips.

















In the coastal scrub we found an active and obliging male paradise-flycatcher - but which one? The upperparts at times looked dark enough for Japanese, but the underparts were surely too pale!























 Eventually, with a bit of reading, we realized that this must be an 'incei' Asian Paradise-flycatcher, one of the northern-breeding migratory races. According to Wells, there are two races which could occur as migrants - incei and saturatior, and two resident subspecies, indochinensis and affinis. Incei (the brown form) differs from the others in having maroon chestnut upperparts rather than rufous chestnut, and a glossy black head and throat which is sharply delineated from the paler underparts. It lacks a grey hind collar, which is more prominent in the resident races.
























This bird had a vestigial grey collar, only noticeable at certain angles.

The Sinoi-Himalayan 'saturatior' race has a more prominent crest and is even whiter below (see this image). There are two confirmed records from southern Thailand but none yet from Peninsular Malaysia.
















The black head was sharply demarcated from the breast. The smoky grey breast and small crest rule out saturatior.



















An educational bird to finish the day!

7th July 2010: Air Itam Dalam and Pulau Burung, mainland Penang

Since I was up early to watch the Holland vs Uruguay semi-final, I thought I might as well make good use of the early start by going back to Air Itam Dalam before dawn in the hope of seeing the Great Eared-nightjars again.

From where I had seen them two evenings ago I was able to pinpoint more or less where they would be roosting, and managed to get good views of several birds in courtship flight and calling. Unfortunately it was way too dark for photography.






















I did manage a distant shot of a bird sitting on the topmost frond of a palm which it was using as a song-perch. I was quite surprised how prominent the 'ears' were. Pre-dawn was quite lively, with Barn, Spotted Wood, Collared Scops and Brown Hawk-owl all calling.



This Plantain Squirrel was running along the boardwalk handrail in the early morning.

I was still hankering for returning migrant waders, so decided to move on to Pulau Burung landfill site to see if any had arrived yet.



The future of our wetlands unless we learn to do with less? I was shocked to see that this area, which had been open water on my last visit, is now full to the brim with trash!



Even more shocking was the fact that a pair of Black-winged Stilts were evidently holding territory on this stinking mass. It's easy to blame the landfill authorities for this sad situation, but it's not that simple. That waste the birds are forced to live among comes from my home and yours (well, not ALL of it, but you know what I mean!). It's a sobering thing to see where our 'throw-away society' ends up.



That attractive pink colouration on the underparts is probably some kind of chemical staining.





Along with the stilts were a couple of Wood Sandpipers and a lone Curlew Sandpiper - migratory species but probably not recent arrivals - it's highly likely that these non-breeders never went north last spring.



A colony of Oriental Pratincoles still uses the place. A few adults were carrying food, indicating the presence of dependent young. Not sure what the prey was here.





Most birds I saw were fully-fledged juveniles from an earlier batch.





I was quite pleased how well these turned out given the poor lighting conditions.





This is always a reliable site for roosting Savanna Nightjars. Getting a clear view of them is another matter as they hug the contours and quickly disappear over the next ridge when flushed!



Lesser Whistling-ducks are thriving at this site, with about 50 birds now in residence. Further population expansion was certainly on the minds of some of the males!







Lots of avian testosterone flying around here!



The books say the sexes are similar, but I wondered whether this bird, with the weakly marked flanks and crown, might be a female...




..and this one, with a darker crown and more distinct pale flank plumes, might be a male.

July is a prime month for a rare Austral visitor to the Peninsula, Horsfield's Bronze-cuckoo. There have been about ten records in Singapore, but only one so far in West Malaysia. They seem to favour mangroves and coastal areas, so I spent quite a bit of time scouring the mangroves along the coastal bund. No luck with the cuckoo, but it wasn't entirely a waste of time!



I found this motorbike parked along the bund, no doubt by a fisherman, much to the delight of the local troupe of Long-tailed Macaques, who just couldn't resist 'dropping in' for a closer look!






















Eat your heart out, Evil Knievel! Here, we call street-racers 'Mat Rempit', but they ain't got nothing on these stunt-riders!






















"Look ma, no feet!"



But the coolest things were the mirrors!



"Hey, come and check this out - there's one ugly monkey in this picture!"






















"Guess what? He's over here as well!"



"I don't know - he looks pretty good-looking to me!"



"He likes me! He's smiling!"



Ouch! I only realized what they'd been doing to the seat of the bike when I drove off. The fisherman won't be too happy!



I found a small group of flamebacks, including this female Common.







...and this interesting male. The malar pattern is pretty unusual for Common Flameback, looking more reminiscent of Himalayan Flameback, which occurs as far south as southern Myanmar. I'm sure this is just an odd Common - they're probably more variable than we give them credit for! Anyone got any thoughts?





A male Greater Flameback was in the same party of birds!






















Can anyone help me identify this Draco sp flying lizard? It was in the mangroves. [Thanks to Muin for responding to this request. It's Draco sumatranus - Common Gliding Lizard.] Just inland of the mangroves, in some scrub in oil palm, there was a Blue-winged Pitta calling. They seem to be on the increase in this part of the country.