Parrot down

 The calls were familiar but the challenge was spotting it as none could blend in more perfectly than this little green one.  So Patience waited for it to fly and reveal its tell-tale flash of red, and it finally did, to perch almost above where I was standing albeit high up.

I suppose I could consider the Blue-crowned Hanging-Parrot a regular to the taman now although it's more often heard than seen.

This was an adult female with its blackish bill, tinge of blue crown and minus the red breast patch.

Being a mere visitor to the the taman, this poor thing barely had a chance to perch openly before it was promptly chased off each time, much to my exasperation.

When it suddenly and uncharacteristically flew down, I tried to move in speedily, hoping for a prized shot but again it was squawked off by the pesky mynas.

As I was waiting

 

Always skittish, always on the run, always a challenge, only in TRK.

As I was passing by

 

The big and the small, but the winner? Hefty? No issue! 

Second 's(t)rike'

One of the greatest frustrations of a photographer's must be dealing with backlight.  And in this case I almost gave up trying to capture this one's image except for the fact that its behaviour hinted that it could be a migrant.

And persist I must despite the challenging light, and was I glad I did for it indeed turned out to be a migrant Tiger Shrike (Lanius tigrinus) .  A personal record of its presence here is since 2016.

05/2022

First 's(t)rike'

 This's the earliest I've sighted a Brown Shrike in the taman as previously it has always been late September.  It's always a good feeling to know that brown shrikes have been spending their winter here annually since my first record in 2015.

 On this occasion, there was practically no effort exerted to spot this bird as it was perched quite openly and only fled when I tried to get closer.

04/2022

For a relatively new arrival, it looked pretty sharp and fresh.

Ever so skittish, this young Shrike, perhaps a female, retreated promptly into the safety of the undergrowth.

It seemed to think that it could be out of sight as it spied me from behind the tip of a twig 😅.

When the raptors came

 However high a raptor is and to hear it call, and to see it is always awe-inspiring.

I had wondered why there were more than a couple of pockets of avian cries that bordered on warning and anxiety as I plodded on uphill, until minutes later I heard piercing calls from above, and there they were, three magnificent ones, later identified by senior birders as Oriental Honey-buzzards of the torquatus tweeddale morph, residents, thermalling and shrieking.  Even from a distance, these birds awed.

This one circled the lowest, enabling reasonable images for firm identity.

And then it was a chase to attempt shots of the other two as they thermalled further and higher away.

Fortunately an opportunity came where it was just enough to capture the second one.

And finally the third that kept consistently the highest up.

Two in one

 I bore some hope when I headed up the bukit, not high as it's still relatively early in the season for migrants to arrive here although elsewhere their presence had already been happily reported.  And then, there, one had arrived after all, or so I thought.

And I still thought as I headed almost triumphantly home that I've got some pretty open images of the newly arrived Amur Paradise Flycatcher in a bird wave.

And then the second surprise when I screened the images, it was not just of an Amur but there's also that of the Blyth's Paradise Flycatcher, two species after all in a single bird wave! 

It was that flash of brown of the Amur Paradise Flycatcher that first caught the attention.

02/2022

03/2022

And the downloaded images happily revealed that the Blyth's was there too, and it's a thrilling record because it's only my second one of the Blyth's here having first sighted it last year.