A babbler's find

 Sometimes it doesn't pay to forage so, as this Pin-striped Tit Babbler found out.

 

It may be a tiny bit of cottony web but certainly not easy to dislodge ...

... that made one agitated bird!

'Fishy' love nest

 

Looks like perhaps the start of an inter-species (?) relationship!

Related post of 19 Feb 2021:
http://rimbakiara.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-fish-bowl.html

As I was waiting

 Enchanted!

A gorgeous iridescent dark emerald green Opulent Jewel Beetle (Cathoxantha opulenta) that bears whitish abdominal sternum and transverse bands compared to the one with the more common yellow sternum and transverse bands.  It is a wood-boring beetle.

Mi 'amur'

 It's always a joy to come across the Amur Paradise Flycatcher (Terpsiphone incei), more commonly the brown morph, during the migrant season.

And without fail I tend to get it in the company of foraging pin-striped tit-babblers, when it's sighting in the bukit.

The female and immature male or first winter sub-adult are very similar.    This bird is a common passage migrant seen only for a couple of weeks before it moves on.  And it maybe sighted again on its return journey back home later in the season.

06/2021

 Showing its curiosity at a strand of web.

Repeat warbler visitor

 The Arctic Warbler (Phyloscopus borealis) has been a repeat migrant visitor for the past years and this is a good year that I have been able to capture its presence this early in the taman, only a couple of weeks after similar sightings being reported elsewhere.

However it was a challenge again to capture its diagnostic feature to firmly identify it as this one kept very much to the upper canopy.  With the two 'magic trees' by the river gone, it's not easy nowadays to get any birds down for eye-level images.

Nevertheless with some luck the dark-tipped beak was enabled visible.

05/2021

Wagtail came after all

 Let's hope that the taman is at last waking up to the sights of migrant visitors.

And so the passage migrant Forest Wagtail (Dendronanthus indicus) did not give the taman a miss this year.

04/2021

I came, I saw, I left ...

Spooked but not enough for it to fly off, but a supercool walk away!

An iora tease

 The still, the motion ....

The real, the illusive ....

It's in the perch, the hop, the stay ....

It's the angle, it's the colours, it's the dream.

What's another day

 When it's just another day for this Coppersmith Barbet....

and another day too for the birder that scanned, squinted, scoured ....

Tomorrow is another day ....

First shrike strike

 It's quite disheartening to see that the taman is pretty uninspiring currently with the absence of migrant avian visitors whilst the bukit is energised by early arrivals.  All the present visitors to the bukit would see similar ones in the taman during this early period in previous years, whether the same visitors or not, hard to tell but of no consequence.

Thus when I got my first strike of this Tiger Shrike (Lanius tigrinus), it's cause for celebration.  It flew in, was on the hunt, looked like it got what it wanted, off it went, and that was it, not to be sighted again that afternoon.  It would have been a 'was it, was it not' situation if not for the shots I managed within the few seconds.

Anyway tiger shrikes generally do not spend their migration duration in the taman, seen for a few days and then disappeared unlike the brown shrike.

03/2021 

Brilliant yellow all round

 The hunt is on and it's timely too when interstate travel restrictions have just been lifted.

Unlike the current absence of avian migrants in TRK, the bukit is enjoying early visits by a few regulars.

However, my recent walk was not too successful by any standard as I only managed to sight the Yellow-rumped Flycatcher (Ficedula zanthopygia), as usual always one of the earliest to arrive.

There was a pair as I could hear the exchange of calls (and someone did get the female), but I guessed I have to be contented for the time being with this male, living up to its hyperactive characteristic.  And birds in the bukit are generally seen higher up compared to the taman, but am still grateful for this early record.

02/2021

And when you decide to shift focus, the inevitable always happens!

Young falconet hunter

 It's a small catch for a small one, probably a mere moth or butterfly, a young Black-thighed Falconet on the hunt one hot afternoon.

And the usual exemplary preening after a meal.

As I was passing by

 

Hardly an acrobatic feat, it's just a natural!

The woodpecker leaf forager

 It looks like it's only the Banded Woodpecker that loves to forage among the dead palm leaves because I've only observed this one do so regularly.

And so it went from one end of the taman to the other, poking into all the dead and dry palm leaves, to appease its unusual appetite of crawlies/dwellers in the palm leaves.