West Malaysia: Genting Without Gambling

The Genting Highlands outside of Kuala Lumpur are best known for their casino complex, but - as I learned on my last visit to the area in 2010 - they have a lot to offer a non-gambling naturalist as well.

If nothing else, the view is probably the nicest in the area (and the cool highland air is a pleasure, too).

Anyway, after seeing Eileen off on her trip to Israel I still had a day to spare before I had to fly to Bangkok, so when my birding pal Bing Lim offered to take me up for a morning in the highlands I was delighted at the chance.  Besides, on my last visit I had failed to come up with a single presentable bird photograph, and I intended, this time, to remedy that.  So, on February 26, 2013, off we drove to the highest point of the Genting road, where it ends at a military weather station.

Even without birds, the road up to the station takes you through some fascinating country.  The roadside vegetation is very different indeed from the tropical plant life of lower elevations.

Not all of it, though, belongs here.  Thanks to some helpful comments to my last Genting post, I now know that these lovely little red flowers scrambling over the bank are actually Cuphaea ignea, the Cigar Plant, a garden escapee originally native to Mexico (and a member of the Lythraceae, the loosestrife family).  

As for some of the other roadside plants - well, my botanical ignorance is showing again… a Dianella, perhaps, based on comments on my earlier post?

This, though, is a fairly easy one: Bamboo Orchid (Arundina graminifolia), a common roadside plant throughout the highlands.

I found this pretty little moth on the wall of one of the station buildings.  It appears to be a species of Abraxas, a large genus of looper moths in the family Geometridae.

On the open ground around the station we found a few Olive-backed Pipits (Anthus hodgsoni), winter visitors in Malaysia.

We also found a pair of Black-throated Sunbirds (Aethopyga saturata), but the strikingly-coloured male proved, alas, skittish.  I had to settle for this poor shot of the female.

Below the weather station is a misty, bedraggled and almost elfin forest, whose birds are often merely voices behind a dense wall of vegetation.

There are some highly attractive flowers to be seen (again, unidentified by me - help from readers would be appreciated). [Thanks to Sean L, who identified this as an orchid of the genus Spathoglottis - see his comment below.  I didn't even spot it as an orchid!]

I don't know what this is, either.  I like the look of it, though.

There are three species of pitcher plants (plus hybrids) here, too - this is the common one, Nepenthes sanguinea.

This time around, the mountain forest birds decided to be cooperative - starting with the subtly-beautiful Chestnut-tailed (or Red-tailed, or Bar-throated) Minla (Chrysominla strigula).

Less colorful, but sleekly handsome anyway: a Javan Cuckooshrike (Coracina javensis).

A sure sign that you are in the high country: a Mountain Leaf-warbler (Phylloscopus trivirgatus), a bird that doesn't usually descend below 1300 m above sea level.

Calling this bird a Mountain Tailorbird (Phyllergates cumulates) is, in a way, only half right: it certainly is a bird of the mountains, ranging from about 1050-2000 m in Peninsular Malaysia, but it isn't a tailorbird.  Not only does it not build its nest among leaves that it stitches together, like "real" tailorbirds, but DNA studies show that it isn't even in the same family as the others.  instead, it is closest to the bush-warblers, in the newly-erected family Cettiidae.

Here is the bird (and photo) of the day.  On my last trip the loud musical songs of the Lesser Shortwing (Brachypteryx leucophrys) seemed to be everywhere, but of the bird itself - a genuine skulker - I could catch not a glimpse.  This time the songs were there again - there must be lots of these birds in the high country - and I was determined to see one.  OK, I cheated; I played a tape (judiciously!).  My reward was this splendid male (yes, he's annoyed - you can tell, I think, by his fluffed-out white eyebrows, which are normally concealed. or almost so).  The blue colour brands this as a typical member of the southern race wrayi; further north, males are mostly brown.

A female shorting  presumably his mate, looked in too, but stayed deeper in the recesses of the undergrowth. 

From the top of the weather station road we moved down to the forest around the Awana Resort, now identified as an Important Bird Area by Birdlife International.

Here the forest is less windswept, warmer and more open.

Middle- and lower-elevation animals start to show up, too.  We found this flying dragon (Draco sp. - I don't know which one) doing its typical imitation of a dead twig (with legs) on the side of a tree trunk.

Coming down another trunk for a look at us: a Grey-bellied Squirrel (Callosciurus caniceps concolor).

The bird life is rather different too: no minlas or shortwings, but a face-off between two male Orange-bellied Leafbirds (Chloropsis hardwickii).

We were searching for one bird in particular, and found it (or rather, a pair of them): the Silver-breasted Broadbill (Serilophus lunatus).  Though not the most colourful of its family, I think it is one of the loveliest.  This is a male.

This may be one of the relatively few birds in which the female, at least in some populations, is the more attractive sex, its throat and breast set off from each other by a thin silvery-white line.  This band is particularly prominent in the Malaysian race rothschildi.

In Malaysia, and further south in Sumatra, the Silver-breasted is a highland bird, or at least (in Malaysia) of middle elevations from 600-1200 m.  I first saw this species in Vietnam, where it is a lowland bird; the farther south you go in its extensive range, the higher up the birds live.

They are, at any elevation, very nice birds, and they provided a lovely end to end a most gratifying morning.

West Malaysia: Below Fraser's Hill

The next day - February 24, 2003 - Chips, Shirley, Annie, Eileen and I set out for a more substantial hike, along the trail to the waterfalls at Sungai Chiling in the foothills below Fraser's Hill.

We set out together, crossing a boardwalk over the river and into the forest - but as before I quickly fell behind, distracted by insects, flowers and other things. Finally - at a particularly steep declivity on the trail, I decided that it would be better to let the others press on to the falls while I worked my way - slowly - back along the river edge, seeing what I could see.

There was, in fact, a lot to keep me happy.

Even if there isn't much to see in the way of wildlife, the myriad shapes of the leaves in a tropical forest are fascinating in themselves.

Some are even more fantastically-shaped once the insects get through with them.

There are flowers, too; this orchid is, I think, Bromhedia finlaysoniana, a common weedy species.

Here, in a bit of botanical serendipity, it blooms next to a pitcher plant (Nepenthes gracilis).

Clumps of Nepenthes gracilis  were, in fact, frequent along the edge of the trail.

The pitchers on this species must be among the smallest in the family.

Malaysia has a rich flora of spectacular gingers. As far as I can tell, these are both Alpinia rafflesiana.

Here, a spectacular ginger is being visited by a spectacularly long-tongued bee – apparently bees such as these are frequent pollinators of ginger flowers.

 Insects, in fact, provided the wildlife highlights of the day. We had arrived at our destination a bit too late for most of the forest birds to be active. Insects, however, there were plenty, including this impressively goggle-eyed fly.

Also, I presume, interested in flies: a Giant Orb-weaving Spider (Nephila pilipes).

 This sombre-looking butterfly is Coelites epiminthia epiminthia, an apparently uncommon denizen of the forest floor. It doesn't appear to have an English name.

It's not as plain as it looks from below – when it opens its wings, it reveals rich, deep cobalt iridescence on its upper surface.

The Common Three-Ring (Ypthima pandocus corticaria), an abundant trailside butterfly, is equally plain – or, at least, non-iridescent – both above and below.

The same can be said for Orsotriaenia medus cinerea, whose common name I have forsworn mentioning here.

I usually find Commanders (Moduza procris milonia) perched on rocks, but this one is making do with a bit of wet muddy gravel. No doubt it spends time on the rocks in the river bed when it gets a chance.

No bright colours, but graceful and attractive nonetheless: the Common Imperial (Cheritra freja), one of a group of Asian hairstreaks with long, lacy tails on their hindwings - distractions, one assumes, for hungry birds.

I am definitely not an expert on skippers.  Which one is this? [Thanks to Bluebottle: it's a Bush Hopper (Ampittia dioscorides)]

This butterfly should be easy, but I'm a bit puzzled by it.  I believe it is a Common Mime (Papilio clytia), one of a group of swallowtails that mimic distasteful butterflies in the Danaiinae.  

The problem is that though it appears to be one of the dark forms of this species (P. c. clytia), but does not appear to have the yellow spots at the bottom of the upper hindwing that clytia should have.  Is my identification correct?  Or has another mimic taken me in? [indeed it has:  Bluebottle tells me that this is probably another mimic swallowtail, Pendlebury's Zebra (Graphium ramaceus)]

As I worked my way back down the trail I made occasional detours out onto the rocky river bed to check for damselflies.  

Schools of young Malayan Mahseer (probably Tor tambroides), locally known as kelah - the raison d'être of the reserve, which was gazetted as a fish sanctuary - patrolled calmer pools among the  stones.

My damselfly hunt yielded what I think is one of the prettiest of the lot, Euphaea ochracea.  The bright yellow stripes on the thorax and ochre-tinted wings mark this as a young male; female wings are clear, and the stripes darken  to orange-red with age.

Back along the trail I found a few Vestalis damselflies, presumably Vestalis amoena, perching (as is their wont) on the tips of leaves in the understory.

This cadaverous-looking individual is a young, or teneral, or "ghost phase" female.

Back along the trail, I was entertained by a number of common dragonflies. This is a Neurothemis, N. ramburii I think.

Orthetrum dragonflies come in a number of colours.  If you prefer red, you can choose between O. chrysis...

…and the even redder O. testaceum.

If you'd prefer something in a nice pruinose blue, your normal choice would be O. glaucum.

However, this time I came across another choice, with paler blue eyes and thorax: O. luzonicum, a common species, but that I had never identified for certain before.

All of the foregoing dragonflies one might find anywhere in edge situations or open country - insects I tend to call "ditch dragonflies".  This one, though, was something special (at least for me).

It was Zygonyx iris, a rushing-stream specialist with a preference for waterfalls.  This is an adult male (the females and young males are marked with yellow.  Besides being new to me and highly iridescent, it had the habit of hovering in one spot long enough so that even I could photograph it in flight (a good thing, because apparently they don't perch very often).

I am not sure why this male is hovering with the tip of the abdomen curved down (other than to show off his claspers), though he may be simply getting ready to latch on to a female should one happen by.

So, all in all, I had a good time - and, by the way, the others did get to the waterfall without me!