Photos from recent birding trips

Nature never fails to fascinate. For me each birding trip is a new discovery, even when meeting the species I have had the opportunity and was lucky to come face-to-face with before. Each birding trip is truly worth waiting for. Here are some recent photos for sharing. Enjoy!

Asian Glossy Starlings (Juvenile)

Olive-winged Bul Buls

Dollar Birds

Racket-tailed Drongo (‘clawing on’ from being blown away by an extremely strong gust of wind)

An Egret showing-off it’s vital statistics. LoL

 

Eurasian Curlews in flight

Eurasian Curlews basking in the morning sun.

Common Iora

Black-capped Kingfisher in flight

Lesser Adjutants in flight

Little Heron

Green-billed Malkoha

 

Green-billed Malkoha in flight

Orange-chested Malkoha

Black-headed Munia

Javan Myna

Pacific Swallow in flight

Pacific Swallow diving into a pond to bathe. A beautiful sight to behold. The water surface resembled being ‘bombed’)

Little Heron

Scarlet Mini-vet (not easy to photograph this very tiny fella)

Silver-breasted Broadbill

Tiger Shrike

Terek Sandpipers in flight

Orange-breasted Trogon

Whiskered Tree Swift

Pair of Flame-backed Woodpeckers (Male –Top and Female – Bottom of pic)

More later. Cheers!

Mynas can be very territorial

We see them everywhere. Along road shoulders, in the fields, up on our roof-tops etc etc. The common Myna is indeed a common sight. And they have also gotten quite used to human intrusions – these street smart city dwellers.

However do not overlook their cool exterior and casual skipping away as we walk past them. There is still this territorial instinct, like in all other feathered kind – to fight a good fight – in the name of defending their home turf. The following photos tells the story of one such encounter between 2 pairs of Mynas.

The classic part is although the fight was intense with a whole lot of noisy and chaotic shrieks, I noted none of them was ‘fatally’ injured when the fight was abruptly ended by a Crested Goshawk swooping down over the 4, causing them to fly helter-skelter in all directions. The Goshawk probably got quite fed-up that the tranquility of the park was disrupted by the foursome creating such a fracas and decided enuf was enuf. Enjoy!

   The first battle cry!

Then all hell broke loose.

Male vs Male, Female vs Female.

All ended in a tangled pile! It became a ‘push’. Take that!!!

One got pinned to the ground.

And the loser momentarily played ‘dead’

Then it was all 4 in a tangled pile again. Note the ‘eye shield’  was activated. Very clever!

You scratch my head I’ll scratch yours!

And the fight went on and on!

One precision kick to the body and the other went down.

  

I was so enthralled shooting the fight that I overlooked to up the shutter speed. :-((

At this point a Crested Goshawk appearance out of the blues and swooped in from above to within whiskers from the fighting Mynas. Instinct tells the warring birds they have to end their feud. This time the Mynas were lucky not to end up as the main course for this majestic Raptor. :-))

The Crested Goshawk

Copper Smith Barbets-Mating

It was one of my normal birding day out at Rimba Kiara. Checked the usual hot-spots for migrant and resident birds. Looking skywards towards a spray of leaf less tree branches I spotted two tiny birds perched almost at the top of one of the branches. As I was not sure of the ID I took a look through my camera’s telephoto lens. It was a pair of Copper Smith Barbets, residents of this wonderful park located within the city limits of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.

It’s the nesting season for most birds around this time of year and none the least the Copper Smith Barbets are in tune. I was really fortunate to record not once but twice the rare photos of the mating birds. It is my pleasure to share the sequence of photos on my blog for all to enjoy.

The female

The Male appeared with a meal offer in mouth.

Commenced rapid wings movement to ‘show-off’ it’s colorful plummage.

Male gets closer but female still not taking ‘offer’.

Male took to flying but female not responding

Eventually the ‘offer’ was accepted.

And the male made it’s move

The pictures in chronological sequence tells the rest of the story

Hey the male still have the ‘offer’ in it’s mouth!

And off it went with the berry. Ehm??? It’s against all convention!

But yes that’s for Chapter 2.