Thursday, March 24, 2011

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...

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

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.