Alor Setar and Bukit Wang 110706

I'm back to Alor Setar again as its going to be a busy weeks ahead for July. I manage to do some birding and herping. 

A male Baya Weaver guarding its nest while trying to attract female to come and check it...

 He turns out to be lucky, here is a shot of a female making a check. But i'm not sure whether she agreed to be the partner or not...hehehe...

 A school of snakehead babies, Channa striatus or 'haruan'. This fish is a mouth-brooder so the baby will flee into the mother's mouth for safety...you can see the mother's shadow at the bottom..

 A juvenile Greater Coucal,

 Hoplobatrachus chinensis, Chinese Bullfrog. A feral species, introduced for the meat....

 Pied fantail,

 Scaly brested Munia, 'Pipit Sisik'

Slaty breasted Rail,

 a weird looking Fejevarya limnocharis, Grass frog...it resembles the one i took from Balik Pulau, Penang. It has elongated skin fold along the back instead of broken ones....

I also went out to do some survey at Bukit Wang,Kedah with Choo Eng and Evan. But there's nothing much as it was quite dry..

Leptobrachium hendricksonii froglet

Microhyla berdmorei,

That's all. Thanks a lot!

Air Itam Dam 110702

I bought my boy a new bicycle recently. So my wife and i decided to bring him to try and cycle around Air Itam Dam. Here are some shots taken during the family excercise outing...

 I saw this couple looking down at the river with a container. I suspect they are poaching the fishes in this river. Some of the incidence where the human misuse the permission given to enter the area. Instead of having a good exercise, they stole the natural resources! What a shame! After they saw me and my family, they move out from the area...

 The guy who is also a smoker throw this cigarette butt, which can cause fire in the forest...Stupid!

 After making a big circle, we finally arrived back at the main dam. We saw this huge fish which i thought to be a 'Pacu'.

 We also saw some painted terrapin, Callagur borneoensis and river terrapin, Batagur affinis.

A shot with the nice Georgetown as background but the haze is so bad...

At the main parking lot, i saw a lot of Grey-rumped Treeswift perched on the tree above the hut. So i decided to take a few shot using my digiscope...

This is the female, notice the lack of rufous ear covert...

here is the male

  I haven't seen them for quite a long time, and now they are back. Maybe its their breeding season. I notice that they are only here at the main parking lot, perched on the same tree only during certain time of the year...must make note of this...

That's all. Thanks a lot.

USM Birding group 110624

I've been longing to create and activate a birding group for my university, Universiti Sains Malaysia. For this particular purpose i have asked for some money from the university. Although the money stil nowhere to be seen, i decided to give it a try and create a short event of birding in the campus.

On friday, 24th June 2011, i sent out some notification on my facebook and through SMS to some of my friends regarding the birding and photography activity. Although i missed a lot of them but its good enough for a start. To my surprise, a few of them showed out including the unexpected attendance of my MNS friend Neoh Hor Kee. We meet up at the Durian Valley, USM. Thanks a lot friends. Here are some shots of the birds seen during the birding trip.

White Bellied Sea Eagle

A lousy shot of a flying House Crow.

Coppersmith Barbet. The only species of barbet in the campus and on Penang Island.

A House Swallow. Formerly it was known as Pacific Swallow but Robson 2008 split the species occuring in Asia as House Swallow.


Pink Necked Green Pigeon. One of the common species during the fig fruiting season.

A pair of Thick Billed Green Pigeon. As u can see this species can be differentiated easily from the former by looking at the red marking at the base of the bill.
Thanks a lot to all participant. See you guys again in the next trip.

nesting Baya Weaver

Since i started birding in USM, i've only seen the Baya Weaver (Ciak Tempua) once at snake creek (just beside Durian valley). It was a male but i didn't notice any nest around. I've never seen their nest until recently.

The location was just across the road from the entrance to my workplace, Centre for Drug Research. There is a nice bamboo tree with an Atrocarpus sp. tree on te side. There were at least 10 nest around. Here are some shot of it,

The Atrocarpus sp. tree is also fruiting. I saw Crested Myna feasting on the fruit,

This is how the seed of plants were disperse....

Some other birds

 A juvenile Black Naped Oriole (Dendang Selayang/Burung Kunyit)

A Stork Billed Kingfisher.

That's all. Thanks.

Posting in short

After i notice that i didn't really have time to update my blog, i decided to do short posting rather than waiting for a long interesting trip. Just like what Yeo Siew Teck did. Here is the first one...

From Perlis, this what i conclude as Ocracheous Bulbul. It was nesting and feeding its chick.

 This is Hairy Backed Bulbul

 A Calotes emma, Forest Crested Lizard

 a Malaysian Blue Krait, Bungarus candidus. Venomous and deadly..

 a Rufous Collared Kingfisher

 Black Bearded Gliding Lizard, Draco melanopogon.

 A Rough Sided Frog, Hylarana glandulosa.

 A juvenile Cyrtodactylus macrotuberculatus.

That's all. Thanks.

A lifer

I was so excited to read Dave's blog and a few days later, Mun's blog on the story of their Pelagic trip.Dave have seen most of the species but for Mun he got 5 lifer in one trip!

So i decided to get an arrangement done for the same trip during weekend. Luckily Choo Eng (Penang MNS President) did an arrangement for a saturday trip on 14th May 2011. We went together with John Steed, Jasmine, Kheng Hong and Liong.



The day started off slowly, we only saw white bellied sea eagle and some tern mainly Black-naped Tern. Later the boatman said he called a few friend whom on other boat which catches anchovies (the seabirds usually congregates close to this type of boat when they drop their net), but there were stil no sign of 'Itik Air' (Shearwater). So he brought us to a rocky isle close to Song-song island. There were breeding Black-naped tern on it and we manage to locate 2 chicks.  

Black-naped Tern

Feeding its chick

Two chick in total...

After that we decided to give it a rest so we landed on Son-song island for lunch. I heard mangrove whistler metallic call as soon as we set our foot on land. There were many other bird on the island. We met two locals who guarded the island,they said there'll be chalet build here. There was no forest trail so i scrap my intention to wander into the forest for a short herping. Anyway, i may come back in future for it...

After about an hour, we went off to the sea again. Still the birds didn't show up.....after half an hour ride towards the anchovies boat, Choo Eng shouted, 'Shearwater!'
n it woke everybody up.. there were two of them sitting on the water. Maybe having some rest. As was said in Dave's and Mun's blog, this bird is quite tame. We manage to get pretty close to it.

Running on the water....

After that we head closer to a group of anchovies boat. There were a few more Short-tailed Shearwater around,feeding close to the net. I took as many photos as i can as i'm not sure when can i see this bird again...here are some of my best shots.

 the underwing pattern

 look! No head!

 most of my flying shot are with the bird flying away. this is the only shot that i can show the leg projection.

 Diving...

There were so cooperative, til everybody got their best shot and we don't care about it presents anymore....hehehe...

Other than shearwater, there were many terns but not as much as i've seen on my first pelagic trip. They were mainly Bridled Tern which i only saw one during that trip.

I think this is stil Bridled Tern and not a Sooty. Sooty suppose to be darker and much bigger.

Little tern in breeding plumage, notice the yellowish bill.




Although in total i only got 1 lifer instead of 8, i'm still glad. Thanks for reading guys.