9 and 17 April 2012: Teluk Air Tawar, mainland Penang

I made a couple of trips to the mainland this past week to try to catch up with the Brown-headed Gull flock before they leave. The first visit was in the afternoon - forgot that the sun would be in my eyes, and the tide was too high to boot, so only saw half a dozen birds distantly.

The next trip, the light and tide were perfect, but the birds forgot to show up - perhaps they're already on their way north. Below are some bits and pieces from the two visits.

There were around a hundred Common Redshanks at the mouth of the river - this was one of the few in any semblance of breeding plumage. Most of the breeders are gone by now.

Most birds look like this - very washed out colours. These are immature birds that won't be breeding this year. Check out the leg colour!

Great Egret at full stretch!

I'm taking more of an interest in these since Chris Kehoe pointed out a possible 'alba' Great Egret in Wong Tsu Shi's blog here (the gigantic one!). This is potentially a new taxon for Malaysia. In Birds of East Asia, Mark Brazil notes that alba is perhaps specifically distinct from modesta (which is the one we get here in large numbers) and is an increasingly observed winterer in Japan and Korea, while modesta winters further south. Alba is larger than modesta and, in the non-breeding season, has pale or bright yellow tarsi and toes, as opposed to the all black legs and feet of modesta. So a bigger-than-usual Great Egret in these parts should be scrutinised, and if possible, photographed alongside others.

A Little Egret sporting groovy pink lores! This is a breeding condition feature, interesting, given that the bird lacked head plumes.

And an Intermediate Egret with breeding-coloured black bill. This species is Malaysia's most recently discovered breeding species. Take a look at Amar's fantastic series of photos documenting this extraordinary find on OBI (here and following).

This is the best time of year to tick off the pond-herons, and the Teluk Air Tawar area is one of the best places to do so in Malaysia. Top to bottom - Chinese, Javan and Indian Pond-herons.

The latter was only recorded for the first time in the country in 1999, but now it's a regular, and has appeared in west coast states as far south as Selangor. Something is definitely afoot with these herons!

This lone Red-wattled Lapwing is probably a sick bird, as they rarely occur singly, and it's largely lacking the  vibrant colours, including the beautiful purple and green iridescence on the scapulars and coverts, of a healthy bird.

I think this is a male 'confusus' Brown Shrike. 'Confusus'  is apparently an intergrade between cristatus and lucionensis. Anyway, it's a good description of my state of mind after reading Tim Worfolk's 2006 paper! I recently came across this extraordinary record of Brown and Tiger Shrike hybridizing in Korea (scroll about half way down). No wonder they confuse us!

Talking of confusing polytypic taxa, here's a stunning male Eastern Yellow Wagtail - tschutschensis. It positively glowed in the low evening sunlight, and made my otherwise abortive afternoon visit worthwhile.

 

It's interesting to see that there are old unmoulted marginal coverts on the leading edge of the wing, and that only the inner 'half' of the greater coverts are fresh feathers. However, I'm not sure what this means, and am hoping that someone can enlighten me!

Where the wagtail was - sunlight under thunder clouds over paddyfields - a visual treat!

23 - 25 March 2012: Kapar power station. 6. Small stuff

These are mostly pics taken on the smaller ashpond roost. For the last few years, this was the main roost, but now that the pond is dry, it's mainly used by sand plovers and stints.


































In the late afternoon sun, the Greater Sand Plovers in breeding plumage looked stunning.

































At this time of year, the different moult timing of Greater and Lesser provide an additional clue to identification. On the whole, Greaters moult into breeding plumage about two months earlier than Lessers, so most birds in breeding plumage are Greaters and vice versa. On the other hand, leg colour at Kapar was of no use - all species showed yellowish legs - courtesy of the light-coloured mud they'd been wading in!





































It was hot out there!

































Exceptionally, some Greaters show a blackish border to the breast band - fewer than 1 in a thousand I would guess. I photographed a similar bird in April 2008.


















































It was interesting to see the variation in the amount of orange in the crown and upperpart plumage.


















I think this is probably a female.















I spent some time trying to find a 'mongolus' Lesser Sand Plover, recently mooted as a full species. This dark bird (left) with some smudginess on the fore flanks was the closest I came, but after some scrutiny I decided that it was still just a 'schaeferi'. I've yet to identify any other taxon of Lesser in Malaysia.




















While on the subject of plovers, here are a couple of big Grey Plovers from the big pond.
















When they're in breeding plumage, you can see why the Americans prefer to call them Black-bellied Plover.



















What do you make of this then?




































This should make it easier - a Broad-billed Sandpiper. You weren't thinking of that other 'billed Sandpiper' were you?


















Oh, and there was one nervous-looking Terek in the plover roost - this one really does have yellow legs!.























This is that other-billed sandpiper - Spoonie! (hopefully you can find it!). Looking for a Spoon-billed Sandpiper at Kapar is a truly herculean task - the birds are crammed together, milling about constantly, and sifting through hundreds of Red-necked Stints in the slim hope of scoring what is probably the only Spoon-billed Sandpiper for hundreds of miles is possibly one definition of obsession!






















You've got it now, right? Check out the unstreaked breast sides, white forehead and large head. Single birds have been recorded at Kapar in 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 and now 2012. I wonder if perhaps there are just one or two individuals involved in all these sightings? If they survive to adulthood, Spoonies are known to be long-lived, so I think it's possible that this is the same bird coming back year after year to winter on the Klang Islands. It's sobering to think that this one bird could represent half a per cent of the world population now.


















The gap between this picture and the previous one hides an hour of tension - from the moment the bird slipped out of view behind another bird (with only me having seen it!) until we managed to locate it aqain right at the back of the flock as the clock ticked round to 7 pm. That exhausting period was spent with seven of us (we were joined by Ang) intensely scrutinizing every stint through scopes repeatedly. At times like this, even I would question whether wader-watching is 'fun'! Hard slog and eye-strain, more like!


















Fortunately this time the bird remained stationary, and more or less in view, for long enough for everyone to get least a fleeting view through my scope.

If you want to see a Spoon-billed Sandpiper, I would recommend going to Kok Kham in Thailand, but if you want the immense satisfaction of finding your own on home turf (along with the pain of spending hours and hours of fruitless searching!), then Kapar is, in my view, the ultimate testing ground! For better pics of perhaps the same bird, see here and here.

23 - 25 March 2012: Kapar power station.4. Shanks etc.

Here are all the Tringas, or shanks, on offer at Kapar. Four species - have a go at identifying them, then see how you got on at the bottom of the post.



Well, obviously this is a (Common) REDshank!



This is a mix of Common Redshanks, Terek Sandpipers and Curlew Sandpipers. The redshanks and Tereks moved off before it got light.



A Common Greenshank (front) with three Nordmann's.



The thin white line! Remarkably, there were periods during which the commonest Tringa in view was Nordmann's Greenshank. I counted 46 birds, the joint highest count at Kapar over the years (46 were also counted on 3rd Jan 2010). 40 are in this video - see if you can find them all! I think it illustrates well how easy it is to underestimate/undercount birds at roosts. They so easily get lost behind each other!





A couple flashing those pearly underwings!









Ever since I found my first one at Beidaihe in 1986, when we barely knew what one was supposed to look like, NGs have been special birds for me. So having this flock in view for three days was a great treat.











I still have some way to go on my flight shots!







Answer: (front to back) Marsh Sandpiper, Common Greenshank, Common Redshank, Nordmann's Greenshank (and Bar-tailed Godwit).