30th October 2008: Perlis

Choo Eng and I chose one of the wettest days of the year to make the 3 hour or so journey up to Perlis. Birding was largely uninspiring (and confined to the car!), except for the few occasions when the rain stopped.



At Wang Kelian, where I had photographed hundreds of Red-rumped Swallows last March, there were some resident Striated (or Rufous-bellied) Swallows mixed in with hundreds of migratory Barn Swallows today.



They're pretty large!



And there's not very much striation going on on the underparts.



In flight, the fresh outer tail streamers are distinctively club-ended and straight, unlike Red-rumped.





The underpart colour is quite striking!



Near the swallows Choo Eng spotted a huge spider in the paddyfields. It was worth a closer look! See the blackish dot in the paddy to my left.



Told you it was big!



See the 'normal-sized' spider on the right. We couldn't work out if this was one of her offspring or her husband!



We weren't sure if this was a water-spider (unlikely with all that 'fur'?) or whether it's a land species that has been marooned by the flooding from all the rain. Can anyone help?



One last picture from Timah Tasoh lake. There were no Racket-tailed Treepies in sight, but this male Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker was some consolation.