8th August 2010: Kuala Selangor Nature Park (KSNP), Selangor

I am involved in a couple of interesting projects with the MNS-BCC Waterbirds Group. The first is titled "Bringing the Birds Back to KSNP", and, more specifically, is an attempt to recreate conditions suitable for roosting waders/shorebirds. More of the second later.























Today we had our second meeting at KSNP. The pilot site for the wader roost is taking shape. Raj, Pratheip and the team at KSNP have done the hard work of clearing the grasses and Acrostichum ferns. Now the plan is to rotivate and flood it to get rid of the regrowing grasses.



The first wader! Somewhere in the centre on the mound of dead vegetation is a lone Common Sandpiper. It's the first wader we've recorded on the new pilot site. It doesn't really count though, as Common Sandpipers aren't particularly choosy about where they hang out!



The active heronry at the Park is quite a spectacle, and can be easily viewed from the main Viewing Tower. It has Grey and Purple Herons and Little Egrets.



A Grey Heron doing some house repairs.



Breeding Purple Herons are spectacular birds!





Heron squabbles! The Park gives lots of interesting opportunities for bird photography. These two young Purple Herons had quite an argument.



Later on, I watched these two adult Grey Herons having an even bigger set-to!













This is the victor.











Having won the fight for this particular patch of pond, the bird soon decided it wasn't much good anyway and flew off!







Pacific Swallow.



A young Pink-necked Pigeon.



A male Common Flameback.



This Abbott's Babbler was quite unconcerned by my presence. Unfortunately I didn't have the flash with me so this was taken, hand-held at 1/13th of a second.





A couple taken with the camera's inbuilt flash.





One of the resident Barred Eagle-owls put in an appearance late afternoon.They're more of a cartoon than a bird!



A dead Acrostichum fern frond.