close up with white-crowned hornbill :p

25th february 2008

Assignment for birding (17th - 24th feb) at Tabin Wildlife Reserve for a week with 2 groups which came from Finland and Japan. During my 1st 2 days, it was raining heavily as the weather has been bad since 2 weeks ago for the whole state of Sabah.

Despite the weather, birding did well with few notable species such as White-crowned Hornbill, Wallace's Hawk Eagle, White-fronted Falconet and one of the target bird for the Finnish group was Olive-backed Woodpecker.

When the Shinwa Tourist Co. Ltd Japanese group (http://www.naturing-tour.com) arrived led by Ooi Chin Hock, senior birder from West Malaysia and my best friend Andrew Siani, they were greeted with fantastic weather and during their stayed, birding was done along the tomanggong road and around the restaurant.

Notable species for the Japanese group;

• White-crowned Hornbill
• Chestnut-necklaced Partridge (good pictures by hideo tani http://torihenro.com)
• Yellow-rumped Flowerpecker
• Banded Kingfisher
• Rufous-fronted Babbler (my lifer)
• Bornean Blue Flycatcher
• White-fronted Falconet
• Storm's Stork

Non bird species sighted;

• Orang Utan
• Pgymy Squirrel
• Leopard Cat
• Wild Boar
• Monitor Lizard
• Long-tailed Macaque
• Pig-tailed Macaque
• Green-fenced Lizard
• Brown Agamid
• Barking Deer
• Bornean Bibbon

this Long-tailed Macaque tried to get into my room !


At last my full moon !


Female White-crowned Hornbill about 15 metres


Male White-crowned Hornbill

Thanks to Dennis, Andrew Siani, Ooi Chin Hock and the tour leader from Japan, Mikiko Hashiba during the trip :)

Pictures was digiscoped with Nikon Fieldscope ED82, SRB-griturn adapter and Fujifilm f31d


Happy birding !

no nordmann's greenshank but i got ruff !

2nd february 2008

visited one of my favorite patch about 15 minutes away from my parents' house late this morning around 10.30am. last year, counted more than 100 black-winged stilts and pacific golden plovers at the same month, but this year it was lesser as expected :p probably due to the changes of climate and unusual seasons ...

kids playing around and some of them was fishing using nets


perfect blue sky but heat haze was obvious while looking through my scope :p


flocks of common greenshanks but some of them looked like nordmann's ...


grey heron


shaky wooden plank as i tried to photographed the grey heron


hahaha single ruff among the common greenshanks, another lifer today :)

spent nearly 4 hours around the wetland before i picked my mum from her office nearby. when we arrived at home, beautiful package from angela contained waterproof beg and lcd sunshade :p so my digiscoping rig getting exciting now hahaha !

continued birding around 5pm after a long chat with my best friend and drove to different wetland where i saw few smooth-coated otters last year. tested the lcd sunshade with magnifying glass and below is the result

brown-capped woodpecker


pacific swallow

so far so good and i'll try tomorrow during bright sunlight to see how well the sunshade perform :)

birds seen today

• purple herons
• grey herons
• brahminy kite
• osprey
• common kingfishers
• black-winged stilts
• common greenshanks
• marsh sandpipers
• barn swallows
• little egrets
• great egrets
• intermediate egrets
• ruff
• pacific swallows
• yellow-vented bulbuls
• pied triller
• white-breasted wood-swallows
• brown-capped woodpeckers
• oriental darter
• white-bellied sea-eagle
  

pictures was digiscoped with nikon fieldscope ED82, srb-griturn adapter and fujifilm f31d