Saturday, January 19, 2008

New Day New Birds

It’s Saturday! I may not be in Kota Kinabalu (KK) today, but I still feel great! With the piles of work in the office and the awful working environment (due to office renovation), It’s great to have a break. During the week, I had been in touch with a few buddies. Trough the net of course! They were also busy…`fun busy’ If you ask me. A lot has happened this week.

Mr. Jason (a.k.a Horukuru) went to Tabin Wildlife Reserve and indulged himself with sightings over 126 species exactly! Most of the birds I presume are rare. What caught my attention was the beautifully digiscopedScarlet-rumped Trogon”. Talking about rare, Ah Seng (a.k.a Gokibury) and Gary (a.k.a GuideBorneo) captured a “Borneon Bristlehead”! Not so distant from Sandakan Town!

Where should I go today? I asked myself when I woke up this morning. I had two potential locations in mind really. I ended up going to the war memorial despite having the desire to look after the “Blue-throated bee eater” at the other location. I didn’t want to spoil my mood with my short lens!


So there I was moving about in the park to find a suitable spot. I went in a bushy area and found a pond. There must be some birds here, I thought to myself. So I stayed there for about 30 minutes and blood hungry mosquitoes are all over my body!


The strategy worked when a bird flew out from the dark bushes and hopped around the ground to find food. It was a beautiful bird that I’ve never seen before and I managed to get some good shots;


Eyebrowed Thrush (Turdus obscurus)

It look a bit annoyed as the flash fires...
Eyebrowed Thrush (Turdus obscurus)

The longer I sat there, the bird became less worried...

Eyebrowed Thrush (Turdus obscurus)
Showing off the beautiful colors I guessed...

Eyebrowed Thrush (Turdus obscurus)

Curiosity look from the bird...

Eyebrowed Thrush (Turdus obscurus)

This was the first encounter with the bird...

Feeling a bit frustrated because the inability to move closer to the bird, I made my move to the open when I spotted a Crimson Sunbird (Aethopyga siparaja) on a tree a few feet from me. The color was glorius;
Crimson Sunbird (Aethopyga siparaja)

A moth caught my attention as I walked slowly toward my car;

The sky darkened, and as I was preparing to bag my camera, this some kind of plover came into sight;


It body language showed as if challenging me to shoot it if I could. Well, I can:

It rained and I quickly packed my gear and headed back to my car.

A bit unsatisfied for the short outing because of the rain, but nevertheless a fun and interesting one. Maybe I'll go there again tomorrow...

2 comments:

Jason Bugay Reyes said...

hehehe nice pics of the eyebrowed thrush and u buy 1st binocular to admire the colours of the birds then click click click. at least u will remember the colours :) then after that invest in scope hahahaha

Kleine Feder said...

You're very patient! I tend to fret and change places too often to really be good at birdwatching, unfortunately... Especially when eaten alive by mosquitoes, and the little blood-suckers absolutely LOVE me.

Very cute birds, and the moth pic is veru colourful, I like it. Does the moth have a name?