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.