West Malaysia: An Urban Pitta

By mid-February 2013 I was home from Florida, and on a flight to Malaysia to join Eileen.  My return, though, was little more than a transit stop, as I had to get to Thailand for the CITES conference in March and Eileen was off to join a brief tour of Israel while I slaved away in Bangkok.  Our jumping-off point for both trips, once I had parked my luggage in Kuching, was Kuala Lumpur, where we took the opportunity to visit with our friends Ng Chih Piew (Chips) and Shirley Lim.  Chips and Shirley are very outdoorsy people, and on February 23 they took us,with Eileen's cousin Annie Chang, out to Bukit Gasing, a favourite local hiking spot in nearby Petaling Jaya.

I'm not the best hiker.  I get distracted too easily; I keep stopping to photograph the little creatures I meet on my way.  Butterflies and odonates (damselflies and dragonflies) get my full attention - even fairly plain ones like this Bush Brown (Mycalesis sp).  The bush browns are tricky to identify (well, for me, anyway) - can anyone tell me which one this is?  Perhaps my young reader Bluebottle, who seems to know a lot more about these things than I do?

I think I've got this one - it's a Common Snow Flat (Tagiades japetus atticus), a skipper that (unlike many others of its clan) poses with its wings spread.  Hence the name "flat", I suppose.

In the odonate department, I'm pretty sure that this forest damselfly is Coeliccia albicauda, a member of the Platycnemidae, or featherlegs.  Coeliccia spp. are pretty similar to each other, but this one differs from its nearest local look-alike, C. didyma, in having a white (not blue) tip to the abdomen and a rounded (not elongate) blotch near the front of the thorax.  In Singapore it is called the White-tailed Sylvan, but as always I'll stick to scientific names in Malaysia.

While I dawdled, Eileen and the others went on ahead.  Eileen, however, came back to ask me what sort of bird was blue with an orange belly.  I thought for a moment, and suggested Orange-bellied Flowerpecker (Dicaeum trigonostigma), or perhaps one of the blue flycatchers. No, she said after I provided some details, those don't sound right.  Maybe, she said, I could show you a picture?

Of course, I said.  This is what she showed me (bear in mind that it was taken with a tiny point-and-shoot). After recovering from the shock, I demanded details and was off upslope like a shot.  Fortunately, the bird was still there.

It was, of course, a Hooded Pitta (Pitta sordida), hopping unconcernedly about in the middle of the trail.  A lifer for me, and besides, any chance to see a pitta is not, under any circumstances, to be passed up.

Note the chestnut cap.  That makes this bird a member of the race cucullata (which, by the way, means "hooded").  On Borneo, the birds of the race mulleri have entirely black heads; black-headed birds occasionally show up on the peninsula, too.  Around Kuala Lumpur the Hooded Pitta is a migrant and winter visitor (which, perhaps, makes them easier to see; migrants can show up in all sorts of places, including back gardens).

Anyway, a sighting like this is as good an argument as any for rating birding in  Malaysia as one of life's special pleasures.

Eventually the bird hopped off into the shrubbery, and I decided (reluctantly) to leave it alone and return to the others.

I continued, however, to succumb to distractions: a Many-lined Sun Skink (Mabuya multifasciata) in the leaf litter...

… a Striped Ringlet (Ragadia makuta), a striking (if not colourful) forest butterfly…

…a common dragonfly, Orthetrum chrysis..

...and a couple of bulbuls.  This one is an Olive-winged Bulbul (Pycnonotus plumosus)...

…and this is a Stripe-throated Bulbul (Pycnonotus finlaysoni).

I even found a distraction in the parking lot on our way home: a White-breasted Kingfisher (Halcyon smyrnensis). this particularly beautiful bird is common on the peninsula, but doesn't reach Borneo so I don't get that many chances to see it.

 Eileen, and our friends, were quite patient with me while I stalked it for a final shot.   They're used to me, after all.

Florida: Portraits

South Florida must be one of the best places on Earth to be a bird photographer.  Go to the right place - in my case, Wakodahatchee Wetlands or Green Cay Nature Center in Delray - and you literally can't miss.  On my visits there I almost invariably encounter photographers, often the same ones - what Florida residents who go there all the time do with their presumably vast collections of photos I can't imagine.  Anyway, here is a gallery of portraits from my February 2013 visit - not to show what a good photographer I am, but to demonstrate how easy it is to look like one.  Let's start with this female Anhinga (Anhinga anhinga), posing on the Wakodahatchee boardwalk for anyone with a camera.

You can get as close as you like.

Head shots?  No problem.  Notice the bright blue ring around the eye, a feature Anhingas develop in the breeding season.

Get the picture?  You can even get shots like this of some songbirds; this is a female Boat-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus major). 

Here is a male, showing off his iridescent colours.  In the lower photo he is performing his "bill-up" display, an aggressive warning to other males in the vicinity.

For his cousin the Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus), it's better not to be quite so close if your aim is to catch a display cycle.  Notice how the wing-patch is covered at first, uncovered as the bird sings, and then covered again as he settles down.

Photographing this extremely complacent Egyptian Goose (Alopochen aegyptiacus), a recently-established exotic in the area, required me to back away just to get most of the bird in the picture.

Taking portraits of herons is just as easy.  Here is a Great Egret (Ardea alba) in breeding colour, its facial skin a bright lime green.

This is a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) (why, by the way, is this bird named after Salome's mom?).

Here, a nesting pair share a moment over a particularly suitable twig.  Nest-building is a pair-bonding activity for these birds; the male collects the building materials, and the female works them into the nest structure.  The final nest can be a metre across.

Many of the wetland herons are easy targets for photographers, but this one usually isn't. American Bitterns (Botaurus lentiginosus) are shy and uncommon here, and I count these, of an unusually bold individual, as lucky shots indeed.

Wakodahatchee and Green Cay are great birding and photography spots, but even when I am in Florida I can't get to them every day.  Fortunately, I can get my fix in my mother's Boca Raton back garden, where her feeder is frequently visited by one of North America's most spectacular and desirable birds.  I don't mean the Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis), though even this female is spectacular enough.  I mean the little green bird next to it - a female, or young male, Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris).

It's the adult male Painted Bunting, of course, that gets all the attention. Few, if any, birds can boast such a gaudy palette (even to the extent of a bright red ring around the eye).

A feeder that attracts these wary creatures is one worth watching, even through a window,  And when two males show up at the same time - well, as WS Gilbert said in The Gondoliers, it's too much happiness!

Florida: Another Breeding Season

Even as early as February 2013, the breeding season at Wakodahatchee Wetlands in Delray was well under way.  The American Alligators (Alligator mississipiensis) still had a couple of months to go before getting down to business; this youngster hatched in an earlier spring.

The adults, far from being moved by thoughts of love (or its crocodilian equivalent), still seemed downright lethargic.

The Florida Red-bellied Turtles (Pseudemys nelsoni) seemed pretty quiet, too…

..And even this Florida Water Snake (Nerodia fasciata pictiventris) seemed content to laze contentedly among the water weeds.

Over on the heron islets, though, the Cattle Egrets (Bubulcus ibis) were definitely restless, squabbling noisily and jostling for prime positions in their nesting trees.

They were already in breeding colour, sporting orange-buff chests and crowns and glowing red mandibles.

The arguing egrets disturbed some downy young Anhingas (Anhinga anhinga)…

… although before too long it seemed to be nap time for everyone.

Meanwhile, at the highest point in the nesting trees, a pair of Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) displayed to each other atop their own cluster of sticks…

… While in the next tree over a pair of Great Egrets (Ardea alba) stretched, balanced atop their perches, and tended to their nest site.

I  did not see any nesting activity among the Pied-billed Grebes (Podilymbus podiceps), but the birds were already beginning to acquire their breeding-season trademark, a dark bar across the bill.

This bird has largely completed its transformation into breeding plumage (and billage, if that's a word).

The Purple Martins (Progne subis) were already in possession of their condos. The communal life of these birds gives rise to some fairly salacious behaviour. Older males, the first to arrive (perhaps the bird on the right is one of them), use a special call to attract younger males and, once they have taken up residence with their mates, copulate with the newly-arrived females.

Red-winged Blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) are resident here, and almost every time I visit Wakodahatchee  I see males displaying their bright red shoulder patches to rivals. Further north, males arrived before females and use their colourful shoulders in bluff battles over territory. When the females arrive, they choose a male based not on his colours on the quality of the territory he has managed to secure.