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.

14th Feb 2012:Kampung Permatang Pauh, mainland Penang

This afternoon I set out to find the wettest area of padifields I could, since most of the area is now bone dry. After some scouting around, I came across a single sizable pool, and it was chock-full of waders!





A quick scan revealed over a hundred stilts, lots of Wood Sandpipers, several Grey-headed Lapwings, and a couple of Temminck's Stints creeping their way along the far muddy fringe. No doubt these are the birds last seen on 17 Dec by Mun. They must have been here the whole time!



There was also a lone Common Greenshank in the stilt flock.

There were lots of places for birds to conceal themselves from sight, so I settled down to wait. Soon enough I was rewarded by the sight of a Little Stint. Again, this is doubtless one of the 'Pulau Burung Four', at least one of which was later seen in these padifields, but not since 24 December.



I had originally hoped that the birds at Pulau Burung would stay long enough to moult into breeding plumage, and I am pleased to note that moult has begun on this bird. The longest tertial and the longest greater covert on the right hand side are new 'breeding' feathers. Colouration in breeding plumage feathers is influenced by hormone levels, and because it's still so early in the season, these feathers are rather weakly coloured. Later moulted feathers will show much brighter hues.



Two scapulars on the near side and one on the far side are also new breeding feathers (the ones with the neat, clearly-defined black centres). Again, because these are early feathers, they only show a trace of typical breeding colours, at the base of the edges. Generally, once feathers are fully grown, the supply of blood to them is cut off, so that they become 'dead tissue', preventing further infusion of colour. However, in some waders, it is believed that this does not always happen, and that some additional pigmentation changes are possible even after the feather is full-grown. This is known as aptosochromatosis (see this post for more on this!).





A couple of shots of the left side reveal a similar pattern of freshly moulted breeding feathers.



Oh, and there were some of the 'common' stints too! Interestingly, this Long-toed Stint has also replaced its longest tertial. The only stint species not represented today was Red-necked, which is overwhelmingly the commonest of Malaysia's four species!



Much later in the afternoon, after the two Temminck's had exited stage left, I found this lone Temminck's much closer. I can't say for sure that it was a third bird, but it seems odd that it was alone if it was one of the earlier closely associating pair.



Like the other stints, this bird has already started its moult. The second longest greater covert is a new, weakly-patterned breeding feather.



There were lots and lots of snipes in the pool, and these eventually became more active and visible as the sun lowered in the sky. Unfortunately, all the ones feeding in the open proved to be Common Snipes. I saw several 'Pintail/Swinhoe's' fly in over the course of an hour, but every one dropped in to cover and remained invisible!



Still, the Common Snipes put on quite a show, with much preening and posturing going on!









With a bit of patience, it proved not too difficult to get some 'tail shots', and I was surprised to see how broad the outer tail feathers are on Common Snipe.



They're even quite easily visible in flight, as on this late-arriving bird.



Eventually, once the light had gone, a single Pin/Swin Snipe did creep out into the open, looking very different from the neat, well-proportioned Commons.



Apart from the obviously different structure, it was much paler, buffier, more mealy in colouration, with a much broader supercilium. Unfortunately, it didn't hang around long, being chased back into cover by one of the Common Snipes .



Last of all to appear, this curious-looking juvenile Greater Painter-snipe. I wonder whether it is one of the four I saw on my last visit here, but perhaps it is too young to be one of these birds about 5 weeks on.

14th Jan 2012: Pulau Burung, Penang

Rubbish dumps the world over are known to be magnets to both birds and birders, and the landfill at Pulau Burung is no exception!

The best time to be there is just as the sun pokes its face through the early morning murk, which seems to also be an alarm call for the birds to wake up!



Suddenly the place transforms from a serene backwater to a hive of activity, buzzing with birds!



The Black-capped Kingfisher was in its usual corner - timid of photographers but bold in chasing off other occupiers of its favourite perches!



Bee-eaters and mynas scattered before it as it made its regular circuit of dead trees, though it did veer off at the last moment when faced with a pond-heron perched on its branch.



Black-winged Stilts breed here, but their numbers are augmented at this time of year by migrants, some of which show variable blackish head and neck markings.





Whiskered Terns suddenly appeared in droves as the sun came up.



I would have driven past the Garganeys if BK Lim (aka the Point and Shoot King!) had not pointed them out to me, much nearer than I'd seen them before, perched together on a log. Hubby was having a snooze while the missus looked a little more alert.



She decided it was time to do her make-up while he slept on (the brown forewing is how we know she's a she).



All this activity proved too much of a disturbance to his slumbers, so he told her to push off!



Ah - that's better - a guy needs a bit of elbow room to stretch - check out those beautiful lavender grey epaulettes!



Now that's just showing off!



Heading for breakfast, with the female (who has a much brighter face pattern) leading the way.



A nearby Little Grebe caught my attention. A recent paper on grebe taxonomy in South-east Asia (Mlíkovský 2010. Systematic notes on Asian birds: 74. A preliminary review of the grebes, family Podicipedidae. BOC Occas Publs 5: 125-131.) proposes splitting the Little Grebes in South-east Asia from those in parts of Indonesia on the basis of bill size and belly colour (the newly proposed Tachybaptus tricolor having a dark belly; T. ruficollis having a white or whitish belly). So I was keen to see if this bird would show me its belly!



It duly obliged, revealing a gleaming white belly, but when it did so, I got a surprise - the bird was moulting feathers left and right, and had practically no flight feathers!



You can see that all the primaries and some secondaries are growing out at the same time. I knew that many duck species undergo a simultaneous moult of flight feathers, when they become briefly flightless, but I hadn't realized that this also happens with Little Grebes. A quick internet search on getting home revealed this to be the case (e.g.here).



There goes another one! This bird seemed really keen to get all of those old feathers out as soon as possible!



After all that action the bird decided to 'put its feet up', revealing the rather finger-like toes (which even have nails rather than claws).





A Wood Sandpiper provided a brief distraction, and enabled me to improve on the landing shot I took the other day.



However, all thoughts of Wood Sandpipers were pushed aside by the appearance of a snipe by the roadside. Long-term readers of this blog will know that these interest me a great deal, and the chance of a close encounter with one was not to be missed!



This turned out to be an EXTREMELY close encounter, with the bird allowing me to park my car less than 3 metres away, forcing me to zoom out to 250mm to get the bird in frame! This is a Common Snipe (I've covered how to tell these from Swinhoe's/Pintail Snipes in other posts).



The interesting thing about this bird was that the 'macro range' enabled me to take a good look at the coverts. There were clearly two age classes visible. The lesser coverts (circled in white and labelled 1) were much more heavily worn than the medians (pink and numbered 2). The lesser coverts (or most of them) show an unbroken buff fringe and are juvenile feathers. The median coverts show a clear dark wedge at the tip, separating the buff into two spots either side of the central shaft. These are adult-type feathers. So this bird is a '1st winter' (hatched last year).



This was the nearest I got to a clear shot - always a challenge with snipes!



Last bird of the day was this pale morph Changeable Hawk-eagle. By now the light was against me, but I don't have many decent shots of this species, so thought I would try my luck.