Ben drew my attention to the 2004 special issue of the journal, Bird Conservation International. This special issue, dedicated to the conservation of hornbills, carries some of the many papers read at the Third International Hornbill Workshop held in Phuket, Thailand in 2001.

Ben e-mailed me, “I just came across a bit of interesting trivia from an introduction page of a special supplement of Bird Conservation International dedicated to the conservation of hornbills… Dec 2004. Vol 14 Supplement S1:S3. The excerpt that caught my attention was this:

“’This volume is dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Glassco Hudson (1956– 2002). One of Lis’ most powerful and exhilarating experiences was in Singapore, in 1994, when a Great Indian Hornbill (Buceros bicornis) flew just over her head, making that sound that only hornbill wings can make. She stood in that bird’s wake, mesmerized.’

“Interesting, isn’t it? Considering that it is one of our non-native birds that had a mesmerizing effect on a visitor. The Great Indian Hornbill is a synonym for the Great Hornbill.”

The Great Hornbill, also known as the Great Indian Hornbill, is native to Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia and northwards to the southern Himalayas.

Great Hornbills are escapees in Singapore. It was the fashion to keep such birds once and there were probably a number of smuggled birds in Singapore then. A few escaped, or were they released, for one reason or another? Anyway, from the above account, at least one bird was around as far back as 1994.

A pair of Great died in the island of Sentosa many years ago, when poison was commonly used to control the rat population there. A bird was also sighted in the Singapore Botanic Gardens, checking out a nesting hole

Currently, only a single Great Hornbill remains, causing much excitement among the urban population when it visits their homes - see here: 1, 2 and 3.

In 2006 a Great and a Rhinoceros (B. rhinoceros), both female, were seen in Eng Neo prospecting a nesting hole in an old tree - see here: 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Image of Great Hornbill at Eng Neo by YC.

Our earlier post on “Look, watch and listen” attracted the attention of a naturalist from McIntosh, Florida, US. Buford Pruitt (left) maintains the blog, Nature Adventures (below) and sent in the following comment to support our call for more studies on bird behaviour:

“…Just identifying and photographing birds is not enough (for me). In this day and age of appalling species extinction, the least we naturalists can do is to document the bahavior of birds. I try to do that with my own blog.

Buford gives as examples the following, and you need to read the original account to benefit from the fascinating stories, and adds. “I am sure there are many exciting bird behaviour out in the field for our birders to document…

“So, folks, please post more stories about bird behavior. We already know how pretty they are, and there are a zillion good photographers out there, so please let’s also post on how smart birds are! The gray parrot is not an isolated intelligent bird species!”

1. A woodpecker and its bait tomato is a fascinating account of how curiosity can lead to discovering why a Red-bellied Woodpecker drilled holes in tomatoes. Can you imagine that this was to lure tomato-sucking insects for its snacks?

2. The cormorant and the catfish is another observation on the use of a “tool” - in this case an oyster bed, by a Double-crested Cormorant to break off the three long and poisonous spines of a catfish it caught before swallowing it.

3. The owl, hawk, crows and coots at dusk on Orange Lake is about how one species affects the behaviour of others. The arrival of a Great Horned Owl just before dark makes the coots floating around the lake nervous. The coots congregate in small groups for mutual protection. The arrival of a pair of Bigmouth Hawks (actually, red-shouldered hawks Buteo lineatus), causes the coots further concern, so they congregate more. When the Fish Crows join in, the coots form tighter groups, so the original 50 flocks now become 20. Why not visit the site to find out what happen next?

Since late February 2008, Dr. Redzlan Abdul Rahman has been contributing a total of six exciting accounts on bird behaviour that you can access HERE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. More are on the pipeline as he keeps on documenting the birds that visit his backyard. Yes, his backyard.

That’s him on the left with his two young sons and his photographic equipment. His able assistant is his elder son, Muhammad Firdaus, in a dark blue shirt. He started off in March 2007 with a pair of cheap binoculars scanning the night sky to look at stars. But bad weather and cloudy skies made him switch to watching birds instead. Now he has swapped his original bino with a William APO 8X42 with close focusing features. And of course his Digital SLR and accessories.

A doctor by profession, he runs his private clinic in the Malaysian town of Raub, in the state of Pahang. The state itself is an exciting place to bird watch. Within the state are a number of hill resorts like Fraser’s Hill and Cameron Highlands. This is also where Taman Negara, Malaysia’s National Park is sited. Birders from all over Malaysia as well as Singapore make regular pilgrimages to these areas, especially Fraser’s Hill.

Living in such a lush area, Dr. Redzlan, who blogs under the name Tabib, need not leave his backyard to find birds. In fact, the majority of his many images that he post in his blog come from his backyard (above). The dead tree in the background is where he photographed most of his birds. Actually, he spends about two hours each morning before work and two hours in the evening after work to study and photograph birds.

The flock of Blue-throated Bee-eaters (Merops viridis) (left top) and the Black-naped Orioles (Oriolus chinensis) (left bottom) are just two examples of the many species of birds that gather on the bare branches of this dead tree.

Many birders start off as twitchers, looking at birds, listing the species seen and seeking out more and more species to increase the list. If you can call Tabib a birder, then he is one rare birder who becomes a twitcher only after he got fascinated with bird behaviour. This is only because through the few years that he got involved with birds, so many species visited his backyard that he got to listing them. His current number is fast exceeding 40. The montage below showcases only a few of the species he encountered.

Living in a neighbourhood rich in bird life, he is priviledged to encounter his birds actively doing things – catching insects, courting, squabbling, nesting, etc. Other birders and photographers usually encounter birds that just perch, waiting to be photographed, thus the many portrait shots that we see in webpages.

I “discovered” Tabib some months ago when he linked one of his postings to BESG’s blog. When I visited his page, I was totally dazzled by the number and variety of images of birds and their behaviour. He was kind enough to allow me to repost some of his earlier images for a wider audience and the close relationship developed from there.

Alan and Meg Kemp were in town recently, on their way to Mulu National Park, Sarawak (left).

Alan’s interests include hornbills, raptors, owls and behavioural ecology of birds. He PhD research was on hornbills, undertaken when he was a research assistant in Kruger National Park. He was the ornithologist at the Department of Birds, Transvaal Museum, Pretoria from 1969-1999 and Manager of the Museum until his early retirement in 2001.

I first met Alan in September 1998 when I joined his South African Kalahari Desert tour. It was a camping trip of sort except that we slept in lodges along the way, not in tents, and cooked our own meals. That was the first time Eileen and myself were exposed to an African safari. Most times we saw sand dunes and more sand dunes, with isolated trees here and there. Once in a while we would be fortunate to view large mammals.

When asked what happened to all the animals, we were told they had gone to neighbouring Botswana. It was then that we decided to visit Botswana. But we never got to do that. We went to Kenya and Tanzania instead.

The 1998 trip was the first time I was exposed to birdwatching. I still can remember vividly, focusing my pair of opera glasses at something in the distance to be told that it was a Cory Bustard – whatever that was, until I realized that it was the name of the bird.

And my collection of South African birds images were simply the desert landscapes with tiny blobs here and there that were supposed to be birds.

Getting seriously involved in birds during the last few years means that I was in contact with Allan, but only through his many publications on hornbills.

And after nearly ten years, I have managed to meet up with Allan and Meg once again.

Images from top down: Allan and Meg Kemp, stopover in the Kalahari Gamsbok National Park, herd of springbok, Kori Bustard, and oryxes.

This is the last of three posts on Bird Watching in Bali by Connie SY Khoo and Lim Phaik Imm. The first was on the White Herons of Pertulu and the second on Ubud and Bedugal Botanic Gardens. They were in Bali from 8-14th November 2007. The postings of their various destinations are not in sequence.

They were in Bali Barat National Park or Taman Nasional Bali Barat on 11th November 2007 . The park covers 777 km sq of the western tip of Bali. It comprises of montane to dry monsoon forests, coastal scrub and some mangroves. It is an ideal site to watch migrating raptors moving from the Java Straits (MacKinnon & Phillipps, 1993). As Connie and Phiak Imm continue…

“We stayed at Taman Sari Chalet and woke up at 4.30 am to reach the jetty at Pelabuhan Layang for the 45 minutes boat ride to the park. The ride to Menjangan Island was rewarding, with terns, whimbrel, white-rumped swift, blue-tailed bee-eater and one miserable frigatebird, all in flight. However, the island itself was unbearable hot. There was also the constant danger of bush fire as the vegetation was dried. The few trees that were around were bare of leaves and thus offered little shade (above).

“The attraction of the park is the celebrated one true endemic, the Bali Starling (Leucopsar rothschildi), found only in this park. According to Mason (1989), as at October 1988, less than 50 Bali Starling remain in the wild, although there are a total of 1,000 captive birds around the world. There is a rehabilitation scheme undertaken by the International Council for Bird Preservation and the Indonesian Nature Conservation Service. Unfortunately, we were not able to see any starlings.

“On the return journey, we detoured to the Menjangan mangrove area to see its main attraction, the five kingfishers: Rufous-backed, Little, Rufous-Collared, Ruddy and Sacred Kingfisher. Luck was not with us and only Rufous-backed and Giant Squirrel were sighted. The mangrove area has no proper landing platform. We had to carry our shoes and equipments from the boat to the mangrove, 100 metres away (above). At another mangrove area we saw the Sacred Kingfisher, our star bird for the trip. It is quite similar to a dirty version of the Collared Kingfisher.

“Our last lap of bird watching was at Menjangan Mangrove Gazebo where our “wow” experience came in (left). Only stayed-in guests and park rangers were allowed to enter the resort. To enter this high-end resort, one had to trespass the jungle dusty track. A lot of beautiful and colourful Green Junglefowl and wild deer (Kijang) were found on both sides of the track searching for food before dawn. They were all exposed as the plants were leafless, this being the dry season. According to the ranger, these beautiful junglefowls will not be easily seen when the plants start growing leaves in February. Interestingly, we saw two females fighting for one male. Both the fowl and deer were very sensitive to slight movements. The only setback was that we were unable to get a snap shot of them.

“On 13th November we headed south towards Tanjung Benoa, Nusa Dua Pond (Pemukiman Burung Lagoon) in south Bali. We were hoping to see the Small Blue Kingfisher and Cormorant. The journey took 1 hour 30 minutes from Ubud.

“Nusa Dua is another famous scuba diving area filled with 5-star hotels like Le Meridien. Nusa Dua is where marble and sandstone sculptures, artificial water fountain and Balinese landscaping slabs and standee can be found. Quality teak wood and other hard wood furniture are mainly found here.

“Birds seen include Purple Heron (Ardea purpurea) (above, top left), Javan Pond Heron (above: top right, non-breeding; below left, male; below right, female), Little Cormorant (Phalacrocorax niger), Little Black Cormorant (P. sulcirostris), Little Pied Cormorant (Phalacrocorax melanoleucus) (below left), Small Blue Kingfisher (Alcedo coerulescens) (below right).

“We left Ubud for the airport on 14th November to fly home to Malaysia. Both of us still missed this unique land very much. We are thinking of coming back to cover places that we did not visit, irregardless of bird watching or to explore further into their culture and the friendly people.

Total costs for two, including guide fees, park entrance fees and ground transport = RM 3,732 plus flight from Malaysia, airport tax and food = RM 1,440. Or total expenses per person for the 7D6N trip = RM 2,586.

A tip from the travellers: Bring bottled drinking water. Insect repellent and instant noodles for long, lonely nights away from civilization. US currency of high denominations get better exchange rates.

References:
1. Mason, V. & Jarvis, F. (1989). Birds Of Bali, Periplus Edition (HK) Ltd.
2. MacKinnon, J. & Phillipps, K. (1993). A Field Guide To The Birds Of Borneo, Sumatra, Java and Bali, Oxford University Press, New York