Singapore May 2014, Botanic Gardens

During our last visit, we birded the Botanic Gardens once, but failed to find the very tame Mangrove Pitta, which resided during that time in the Healing Gardens. Now we visited these gardens four times, but with a different target species.

This time we were searching for the Red-legged Crakes that inhabit the gardens. Apparently these gardens are one of the best places in the world to see this shy species. We searched several sites within the Botanic Gardens thoroughly, like the Eco Lake, the Foliage Garden, the Fern Garden, the Healing Garden and the area around the visitors centre, but in the end we saw only White-breasted Waterhens and no Red-legged Crakes. We saw lots of more common species though, of which Grey-headed Fish-eagle, van Hasselt's Sunbird and Large-tailed Nightjar are probably the most notable. Like in Sungei Buloh, the migrants were definitely missed. We also recorded Common Treeshrew and Plaintain Squirrel, like the last time, but this time also found a Slender Squirrel.

Pink-necked Green Pigeon (Treron vernans) (male) are very common in the Botanic Gardens

Laced Woodpecker (Picus vittatus), another common species (video made by Anna van der Kaaden)

Singapore May 2014, Sungei Buloh

After two months in Kalimantan it was time to arrange a new visa for Indonesia again ans so we spent another week in Singapore. I wanted to give the Mangrove Pitta another try, so we visited Sungei Buloh again. For information how to reach this lovely mangrove forest see this post about our first visit to this site.

Unfortunately we did not find the pitta, nor many other interesting species. I think that Singapore is indeed generally boring outside the migratory season. We did find one migrant, a Pacific Golden Plover, that was still sticking around, but not the interesting migrants that can be seen here in other times of the year. Other interesting birds observed here included Oriental Pied Hornbill, Copper-throated Sunbird and Sunda Pygmy Woodpecker. We also saw a Saltwater Crocodile here, but dipped the Smooth Otters again...

Male Copper-throated Sunbird (Nectarinia calcostetha)

Male Oriental Pied-hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris) chewing on a stick

I would advice against visiting this site (or entire Singapore) outside of the migratory season, for it is not the resident species that make this place (or country) interesting, but its migrants. Without them the birding is rather slow and boring.

Kalimantan March - May 2014, Ulu Barito

As announced in the previous post about this area we returned to Batikap for another amazing six weeks in this pristine forest. The results were again very fruitful birdwise. During the first visit we observed more than 190 species and were able to add another 40 species to the list during our second stay. This made our list of this site longer than most survey lists including the Heart of Borneo expedition lead by Martin Holland and the very good Barito Ulu expedition from 1989!

 Species that were newly found in the Batikap protection forest that deserve mentioning are Bornean Ground-cuckoo, Bornean Banded Pitta, Fulvous-breasted Jungle-flycatcher, Malaysian Honey-guide, Rail-babbler (which might be the first record of this species in Kalimantan since 2006), Wallace´s Hawk-eagle, Grey-breasted Babbler and Sunda Frogmouth. We also found the first Crow-billed Drongo for Central Kalimantan during our second stay, but unfortunately there is no proof of this record, as it was observed from a cis, however bill-size and tail-shape were very conclusive for this species. Another major discovery that made me very happy was the second Fairy Pitta for Batikap. The first was found by Adhy Maruly in the arctic winter of 2013 and this individual stayed around the camp for months. The individual found in 2014 is the fourth individual for Central Kalimantan and the fifth for entire Kalimantan (and with that, quite possibly for entire Indonesia!).

The fifth record for Fairy Pitta (pitta nympha)

Another crappy record shot, this time of a Grey-breasted Babbler (Ophrydornis albogularis)

Other interesting observations were the amount of migratory birds, which passed through Batikap on their way up North. Migrants observed included the Fairy Pitta I mentioned above, Siberian Blue Robin, Zappey's Flycatcher, Eastern Yellow Wagtail, Common Kingfisher, Blue-winged Pitta, Pin-tailed Snipe and Swinhoe´s Snipe. The former two species are always a pain to separate (see this post) but this time I managed to record the flight calls of 2 different individuals (out of 32 individuals found) of which one recording points towards Pin-tailed snipe (around 2 kHz) while the other recording points towards Swinhoe´s snipe (around 3 kHz). However, it appears very little is known about the exact vocalisations of the two species and my identification might well be proven wrong, but for now they match with the recordings on xeno-canto.org. (note that Myers states in “the Birds of Borneo” that Pin-tailed Snipe calls around 4 kHz which is possibly wrong)


Of course my searches for the three difficult ayam hutans continued as well. After countless attempts to see them on foot, it turned out that the rivers were my best allies. A male and female Black Partridge got flushed by our cis/klotok/prahu next to Joloi River and were forced to cross a small stream allowing reasonable views. Unfortunately I never figured out the actual vocalisations of this species… A female Bulwer´s Pheasant flew over Posu River and allowed short views and in a similar fashion a male Bornean Peacock-pheasant crossed Joloi River. Therefore and due to a very busy schedule with another Orang-utan release I never tried again at the Bulwer´s Pheasant lekking site and was it even more impossible to visit the saltpan (see last post about this site). Other species I managed to get (much) better looks at included Large-billed Blue-flycatcher, Great Slaty Woodpecker and Short-toed Coucal.

Large-billed Blue-flycatcher (cyornis caerulatus)

Short-toed Coucal (Centropus rectungius)

Another interesting thing going on in Batikap at the moment is the flowering of most tree species (including most of the dipterocarps), pointing out that a masting is about to happen (and pointing out that it will be an El Nino year). During the week we were leaving most of the smaller dipterocarps were already covered with their helicopter fruits, but these were still small. I am so excited that we will experience a masting of a Bornean lowland dipterocarp forest, for it means that many animals from surrounding areas will gather to feast on the massive amount of fruits. We already noted that the amount of Bearded Pigs increased a lot. Also the bird compositions seems changed with large amounts of Green Imperial Pigeons and different species of Bulbuls (mostly Black-headed and Black-and-White) present compared to our earlier visit. The bird activity was also a lot higher than last time, with a lot of birds starting to breed and many species (like Garnet Pitta and Bornean Ground-cuckoo) were calling now, that were not calling or were calling a lot less during our first visit. We also noted that the amount of nest-swiftlets decreased a lot, but I have no explanation for this.

A bad picture of Garnet Pitta (Erythropitta granatina)

What also was a different experience was the opportunity to venture deep into the forest at night with the company of four students from Bogor, Java, who were surveying frogs. This enabled me to find a lot of nightbirds like Sunda Frogmouth, Oriental Bay Owl, Brown Boobook, Barred Eagle-owl and Reddish Scops Owl. We also found several sleeping birds, including White-crowned Forktail. The close-up sightings of this species enabled me to get decent looks at the crest-length and tail-spotting distinguishing this species from the “Bornean” Forktail. A blogpost about the best features distinguishing the both (sub)species can be found here. Of course we also got great looks at a lot of frogs of which the Bornean Horned Frog was by far the most breath-taking.

Male Bornean Horned Frog (Megophrys nasuta) (picture made by Anna van der Kaaden)

During the nightly searches for frogs we also found some mammals like the amazing Sunda Tarsier, Bornean Slow Loris, which truly is a slow animal, Muller´s Rat and Dark-tailed Tree-rat. Other cool mammals observed (next to the dozens of Bearded Pigs, who can actually be quite scary when met alone on foot in the forest) were Smooth Otter, Binturong, Long-footed Treeshrew, Large Treeshrew, Lesser Mousedeer and Bornean Yellow Muntjac. Looking back at our second stay I am (again) very content with the results and looking forward to return to this lovely place.

Bornean Slow Loris (Nycticebus menagensis)

Sunda Tarsier (Tarsius bancanus)