Monday, January 20, 2014

Chuping-Raptors heaven 2.

I'm tempted to revisit Chuping after a not so successful trip on my own. So i get Choo Eng to accompany me this time. He had seen most of the raptors but our main target is the Short-eared Owl which was sighted by a friend, Neoh Hor Kee. We head up to Chuping at around 5 am to ensure that we didn't miss the early birds.

This trip turns out to be great and i got a few keeper shots of the raptors. Here are some of them.



 Eastern Marsh Harrier. Female on top and male bottom. 

 Eastern Yellow Wagtail.

 We thought this guys was the rufous winged buzzard but in the end we concluded it as the grey faced instead. Judging by the presence of the median throat and moustachial stripe. Plus the front part looks barred.


 Kestrel

 Large hawk Cuckoo. A juvenile.

 Lesser Coucal

 Little Cormorant.

 An Osprey with its prey, a fish. Although at first, we thought it was a rat.


 Female (top) and male (bottom) Pied Harrier.

 Short-toed Snake Eagle.

 Releasing a bomb.

Stonechat.

In the end, it was a very productive trip but we didn't manage to see the owl although we stayed till 8.30 pm. Maybe next time. Any comments will be very much appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Monday, January 13, 2014

Chuping-raptors heaven

After hearing of so many rare sightings in Chuping, Perlis. I decided to go there on my own on 24 December 2013. Indeed there were so many harriers and i got my lifer which is a short toed snake eagle. I stayed til noon and decided to head home after a heavy rain pouring down for an hour at about 2 pm. Here are some shots of the birds and a snake i saw during the trip. Not many good shots but i admit shooting alone is hard especially if you are shooting from car. Anyway, wait for my next post from the same area but this time i went with a friend.

 Black Drongo




 I couldn't really be sure of this raptor's id. I think its just a dark morph Oriental Honey Buzzard but i could be wrong.

 Another raptor which i also think was an OHB.


Zitting Cisticola.

An Indochinese Ratsnake resting on the Mimosa pigra tree. I also saw a Copperhead Racer crossing the road but no shot coz its too fast. So did a pair of quail which i thought was a Blue-breasted.

Thats all guys. Will post the second trip report soon. Thanks for reading.