Posting from Panaga: Happy new year!

Monday, 7 January 2013

Happy new year!

A quick post on some of the egrets and herons I have recently seen. And for good measure I'll throw in a pic of a snake as well. End of last year we had a brief holiday in KK (see also previous post) and I spend one morning along the waterfront at Prince Philip's park. The first birds I saw were some whimbrels. One of the birds had only one leg left, but seemed to manage quite well.

Whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus).

I was aiming for some good pictures of the local specialties; blue-naped parrots and crested myna's. Both these birds were easily spotted, but the pacific and chinese egret's along the coast-line drew must of my attention. Here is the myna:

Crested myna (Acridotheres cristatellus).

And the pacific reef egret:

Pacific reef-egret (Egretta Sacra).

The star of the morning was however the chinese egret.

Chinese egret (Egretta eulophotes).

This bird was quite undisturbed by my presence and even approached me rather then the other way around. Here it is flying along the coastline.

Chinese egret (Egretta eulophotes).

Today most people were back in the office. One of my colleagues, Axel, informed that he had seen a Malaysian night heron yesterday. This was the second sighting as some other friends had probably seen one in their garden a fortnight ago. After my failed attempts to locate that heron, I had a lot more luck this time. The night heron was still at the same patch were it was seen by Axel yesterday! Big thanks to Axel for showing me!

I quickly drove back to get my camera and got a couple of shots before the bird disappeared in the undergrowth when some passersby approached this weird looking guy (me) to ask what I was looking at. It is definitely also true that you don't see a foreign expat lying in the grass next to the road in his office attire everyday... I'll try to go back again tomorrow afternoon to get some better shots.

Malaysian night heron (Gorsachius melanolophus).

The final picture of today is this Malaysian Brown Snake that I nearly turned into road kill yesterday. Luckily I noticed it just in time - and the snake seemed grateful enough to allow me some close-ups.