Hutan Simpan Sungai Sembrong, Keluang, Johor

I forgot to do some write up on this trip...late but here it is..

I was again invited to do a survey for EIA by school of biological sciences,USM. This time, it was in Johor. we used the same road going to the Peta, Endau-Rompin, but we took a right turn after about half an hour drive in from the main road. We stayed at a 'kongsi' own by a businessman who planted cloned rubber trees. The 'kongsi' was meant for the workers of course.

The forest was said to be unproductive secondary forest, which is why they wanted to convert it to cloned rubber tree estate.

After going into the forest, i realized that it is a peat swamp forest. I'm surprise by the diversity, especially bird wise of the area. I manage to record more than 90 species of birds. Other than that, we also captured a bat which we've never seen before,although it is common at Krau Reserve, Hipposideros ridleyi.

Here are some of the shots taken from here,

Tiger shrike

 Balionycteris maculata, Spotted Winged Fruit Bat

 Buff Vented Bulbul

 Cream Vented Bulbul

 Black Shouldered Kite. I noticed that this species is in a process of nesting

 Striated Swallow

 Footprint, belongs to some sort of small cat

 Measuring the water quality

 Black Bellied Malkoha

 Red Naped Trogon

 Hipposideros ridleyi

 Leptobrachium nigrop

 Little Green Pigeon

 Maxomys surifer

 Red Billed Malkoha

 Savanna Nightjar

 A Tapir's footprint. Found at quite a few different area, showing that tey are surviving well here..

Other than Tapir, there were lots of elephant in this area too.

It's a pity to see this biodiversity rich area will be destroyed but we can only propose them to do selective clearance and not total clear fell. I hope these wildlife will find their new home...

Perlis State Park 110313

It is the time again to bring the students to the field. As usual,Perlis State Park is always the best place to go as it can cater more than 40 students. This time, i decided to concentrate more on my digiscoping. It was raining on the first day and the subsequent day was cloudy or drizzling, giving a very big challenge for digiscope.



I did notice the Nikon P5100 which i have in combo with Nikon ED 82 fieldscope is a lousy camera in low light. The noise is very visible even at ISO 800. Sometime, nothing comes out on the screen when turn it on...it seems to have faulty! :( I wish i could get a replacement for it...but no time soon. Anyway, i'm glad some of the results turns out quite ok....


A video of a red throated barbet,

Banded Broadbill's nest

Draco blanfordii

 Dusky leaf Monkey

 Ratufa bicolor,

 a nice effect cause by the low shutter of the cam,

 Eutropis macularia,male,

 Hylarana nigrovittata

 Orange breasted Trogon

 Rufous collared Kingfisher, female,

 A stick insect

 Varanus nebulosus, this fella can be seen on trees in front of the surau. I saw it most of the time when i visit PSP.

Some of the shots from my D300s,

Common Palm Civet

 Kerivoula pellucida

 Lariscus insignis, three striped ground squirrel.

 Rhinolophus macrotis,new record for the park n new locality for this species.

 White Handed Gibbon

When it come to eating time, the students are so enthusiast. Having barbecue...

PSP always been a very good place either for mammals, birds or herpetofauna. I'll come back as i still have some species that i still didn't find in the park. Thanks.

Southern Jungle Crow Update

After a while, i decided to go and check on the nesting southern jungle crow which i found as in previous post. When i arrived at the tree where the nest were, it is empty. The nest became quite hidden as new leaves are out.

So i decided to move a bit to the front after i heard a call of a southern jungle crow. To my surprise i saw another nest with a southern jungle crow in it.

 I missed to take a shot of the bird jumping out of this nest. My digiscoping skill is still very bad. Too slow. Anyway here is the shot of another bird perching nearby.

I'm confused and a bit worried. Is it me who caused the crow to move out from its first nest? 

Just yesterday, i manage to squeeze a few minutes to visit the bird again. I did observe that the bird still in the second nest. But somehow, it still occasionally visit the first nest. And it makes me confused whether this bird are really nesting or is it just another behaviour of it. Can anybody shed some light on this? Thanks a lot.

Nesting Southern Jungle Crow

Southern Jungle Crow or formerly known as Large Billed Crow is formerly a common resident on Penang island. Nowadays it has become quite uncommon. In USM, this large black bird can be seen flying over or calling on high trees.

I've seen an attempt from this bird to sit on a nest before at the museum. I was not sure back then whether it was really nesting or just trying to attack the nest. But recently, i manage to locate a nest which is actually quite noticeable. Quite surprising for such a wary species...

The nest is high up, about 10 metres. Here are some shot of it..

Hmmm...now only i noticed that i didn't take a shot of the whole tree...sigh! Nevermind, i'll add it up later..

Wader survey along Kedah coast

The chinese new year break gives me some chance to do some wader survey along the Kedah coast. Its been so long since i visited the area. Lucky it was more or less the same...just that the variety of wader is a bit low. Maybe it is still early. Here are some shots taken from the area...

Whiskered Tern

 Terns hunting at the rivermouth

 Terns roost, there were few hundreds of them, mainly whiskered and white winged tern,

Great egret with a mudskipper..

 Whiskered in breeding plumage..

 Pacific golden plover is the most tame among all..

 A group consist of some godwit, greenshank and others..

 I do hope this is Nordmann's Greenshank but i think its just common...

 Curlew Sandpiper in partial breeding plumage,

Some view of the area. It has a very extensive mudflats but pity there were not so many places to roost while the tide is high. Maybe that's the factor why this area has less wader...

I'll need to come back here and come early morning or evening to get a better light...

Kamunting and Bukit Merah

After hearing from friends that there's a Little cormorant at Kamunting, and many people have seen it, i can't help myself but to plan a trip there. I contacted Choo Eng who later contacted Kimchye to conform whether the bird is still around or not. Luckily i got an sms from Choo Eng saying that the bird is still there. We headed down south late noon.
As we were on the highway, i can see dark clouds over Maxwell's  hill, i can only hope that it won't be raining when we arrive at the mining pool.
Indeed we are lucky, that it was just a slight drizzle when we first arrive. Without wasting more time, i set up my Nikon digiscoping set and head up to the lake. Choo Eng used his binocular and poited to me where the bird is. I took some shot but it was quite far and the Nikon Coolpix P5100 is not good under low light. Anyway here are some of the shot using Nikon P5100+Nikon ED 82 fieldscope+Manfrotto tripod with video head.

 The little cormorant was later flew and perched closer to the lakeside permitting us to get a better shot.

 Showing its movable upper mandible...

 Some other bird that we saw was Cotton Pygmy Goose, Purple Swamphen and many other commoner..

After a while, we decided to drive up and stop at Bukit Merah. It was only a while before the rain starts to pour heavily. I manage to get few shots of the grey headed fish eagle.

Some other bird seen was the usual osprey and oriental pied hornbill. Better luck next time.

Langkawi Expedition 15-21 january 2011

Been lagging behind with my write up...lots of thing missed out coz by my busy schedule and lack of laptop/computer with proper editing software. Anyway, i went to Langkawi representing USM for small mammal and bird survey. I also joined Dr Norhayati from UKM who is a herpetologist. Here are some of the highlight although most of the time i'm busy with small mammals...


We drove up  Gunung Raya on the last day. It was second after i told my friend that if he saw any bird,please stop the car,that he saw this pair of wreathed hornbill

I saw two Grey Faced Buzzard on top of Gunung Raya. What a lucky day..

This is a Rufous Bellied Swallow from Wat Wanaram. I was there trying to find a lizard that me n friends described in 2008 but it was nowhere to be found..

Some herpetofauna highlight,

Leptobrachium smithi. For Malaysia this species is endemic to the island of Langkawi.

 Though resembles Leptobrachium hendriksonii in general appearance, the yellowish iris in contrast to orange quickly distinguished it...

I hope i can post more photos but this desktop is way too slow to handle the software...maybe next time..