13th October 2008: Bagan Nyior, mainland Penang, and Yan, Kedah

First stop this morning was Bagan Nyior. A few days ago Peninsular Malaysia's first Little Curlew was found south of Melaka, and I was hoping that perhaps I might chance across one in this quite suitable habitat.



This area is home to a herd of cattle and a herd of Water Buffalos. Cows I know about, and am not bothered when they start to follow me. I know they're just curious. But when Water Buffalos start advancing en masse towards me, uttering their deep cough-like bellows, I feel a little uneasy. I'm not sure of their intentions; those horns look mighty sharp, and this is no place to run! Fortunately they eventually left me alone!



Walking into the sun just as it crested the hill, illuminating every droplet of dew, made for some interesting photo opportunities. I found myself wading toward a flock of Pacific Golden Plovers.






Eventually the flock took flight, gold and silver in the low sun.



No Little Curlews though!






















The local Crested Serpent Eagle waiting for the sun to get warm.











There were 8 Grey-headed Lapwings, up from one last visit, and I got a few fleeting chances to try photographing Pintail/Swinhoe's Snipes.





There were also a few Little Ringed Plovers and Wood Sandpipers around, and three Long-toed Stints, which I managed a few blurry flight pictures of.

At about 8.30 I drove over an hour north to explore a new area, the rice fields and coast west of Gunung Jerai. There have been some reports of waders along this coast, so I wanted to check it out. I arrived in the area as the tide was reaching its highest point. There was a small flock of 50 or so Lesser Sand Plovers roosting on the foreshore, and in an empty paddyfield there was about 150 birds, including Red-necked Stints, Curlew Sandpipers, Lesser Sand Plovers, Terek Sandpipers, and even a Ruddy Turnstone. It was the first time I've seen these species in this habitat.






Two very different-looking juvenile Common Redshanks. Both have the distinctive buff notches on the scapulars, coverts and tertials, but the lower bird has much larger buff marks, and a different pattern on the tertials. Individual variation or racial differences?



An Intermediate Egret, showing the distinctively small, round head, and short, black-tipped yellow bill.



This female Pied Triller appeared briefly somewhere near Yan as I drove along the coastal bund.



Got a couple of billion to throw away? Why not build a 2.3km bridge from the mainland to an uninhabited island?



And then never open it! Still, I guess we should be happy that the full plan to build a port on this island never took off. Now it's just the world's most expensive fishing jetty!

8th October 2008: Tanjung Tokong

A few more of the same from another stormy afternoon at Tanjung Tokong.



A Lesser Sand Plover.





The long and short of it! Two individual Red-necked Stints showing two extremes of bill length.



A juvenile Curlew Sandpiper dropped in briefly before being chased off by the Lesser Sand Police!



They tried to give this Ruddy Turnstone the same treatment...



...but found it wasn't so easily intimidated!



"You wanna piece of me?!"

7th Oct 2008: Tanjung Tokong, Penang

I went down to the mudflats in the late afternoon, hoping for some nice evening sunlight, but instead, I got this!

I judged from the wind direction that I wasn't going to get wet (correctly!), and found that the light produced some interesting results, even though I had to up my ISO and reduce my shutter speeds. At least there was no heat haze!



The Lesser Sand Plovers were up to their usual games of brinkmanship, standing upright to make themselves look as big and frightening as possible!



On closer inspection I noticed that these birds have quite different-shaped bills from the ones that came through in August - more bulbous-tipped and smaller.






















Comparing the two, the difference is quite obvious. The top bird is one of the two seen today; the middle one is one of the smallest-billed males from 5th August, and the bottom one the longest-billed female from the same date. If the lower two are 'schaeferi' then perhaps what are coming through now are 'atrifrons', which, according to Message and Taylor, winters in Sumatra.



A couple of male Yellow Wagtails of the 'simillima' race engaged in similar territorial spats right in front of me, but unfortunately my shutter speed was not up to the challenge of capturing them in mid-altercation. You can see some bright new half-grown throat feathers, still partly encased in the quill - what ringers call 'in pin'.



There were quite a few Red-necked Stints around, adults now in pristine non-breeding plumage (well, almost, this one still has one pink breast feather!)



Some haven't yet grown their new tertials, leaving the unmoulted primaries exposed.



This one has a full complement of new tertials. Notice that, with the way the flanks feathers are fluffed up and the scapulars are spread, it's impossible to see any coverts at all here. This can be confusing for budding wader-watchers! The five rows of scapulars can either be held 'closed', in which case the coverts can usually be seen, as in this picture, or 'open' as in the picture above.



OK, I admit it, the real reason I was there today was that I was hoping to get better views of the two probable Little Stints I saw last week. I eventually managed to find one (not the one shown in the last blog entry, as this one has much less of a breastband than that bird).



This one was also in pristine non-breeding plumage, and as such, a much more challenging bird to identify than those earlier in the migration.



This one wasn't as long-legged or as fine-billed as some I've seen, but after watching it at length through the scope, I was convinced it was one. I would characterize Little Stint's body shape as being like a football, and Red-necked's like a rugby ball. This, plus the difference in leg length and head/neck proportions give an appearance quite unlike that of a Red-necked. This bird also fed rather more rapidly than Red-necked - something I've noticed of other Littles I've seen. Red-necked seem to shuffle almost like a Temminck's, whereas Little seems more in a hurry. This bird was constantly harassed by Red-neckeds whenever it was deemed too close, which may have contributed to the impression of it being a runner.






















In the overcast light, the Little was the brownest of the stints out there (all of which were adults in non-breeding plumage). It had fine pale lines either side of the lower mantle, not always visible - perhaps obscured by other feathers. Not sure what the significance of this feature was, as it shouldn't be there in this plumage! This composite hopefully illustrates the football/rugby ball analogy!



You can just about make out the pale mantle line I mentioned above in this pic.




















For what it's worth, here's a comparison of the primary projection beyond the tertial tip (PP) and the wing projection beyond the tail tip (WP). Clearly the Red-necked (lower pic) has both a longer PP and WP. Whether its tertials are yet full grown is a moot point though.



One more for the road. The "White-faced" Plovers were conspicuous by their absence today, and the Kentish Plover was seen only briefly. However, there was plenty of exposed mud for them to be feeding on, so they are probably around somewhere.

3rd October 2008: Tanjung Tokong

I managed to get a couple of hours at Tanjung Tokong today. The tide wasn't high enough to push the birds up onto the sandbar. I tried my wardrobe hide, but being so low to the sand in the midday heat, heat haze coming off the sand was a big problem.




While waiting for birds, I noticed this ghost crab doing some spring-cleaning.



There were a couple of possible Little Stints (such as the rear bird here) among the Red-necked, but they didn't come close enough to clinch identification for certain.



The birds I spent most time looking at were White-faced Plovers, which have increased from 1 to 6 since my last visit. Here's one behind a Kentish Plover, showing just how different they are.





I found it significant that the normally mild-mannered Greater Sand Plover wouldn't tolerate the intrusion of a White-faced Plover into its feeding territory - both are crab-hunters.







This male still had a lot of breeding plumage.






















Best of all today was this first winter. It had nice juvenile coverts, and the beginnings of a blackish frontal bar across the crown, which may indicate that it's a male.






















Trying to cough up a pellet. Waders, like raptors and owls, cough up pellets of the indigestible parts of their prey, such as the ground up shells of the crabs they catch.



An adult female White-faced on the tideline.







A few shots showing the distinctive wing and tail pattern of White-faced Plover.