This Monday was one of Godwits.
The day started off well with this flycatcher that I noticed sallying from one of the trees in our garden during breakfast. Almost an exact repeat from October last year, see
garden flycatcher.
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| Dark-sided flycatcher (Muscicapa sibirica) |
We were having a day off and I took the opportunity to drive around some of the remoter areas of Brunei. First though was a stop at the very familiar grasslands surrounding Seria. This very skittish black-tailed godwit was foraging in one of the grassy pools.
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| Black-tailed godwit (Limosa limosa) |
This was in fact the very first godwit ever seen by me! Next we drove on to Wasan rice fields, where numerous rarities have been recorded in the past. The first birds we saw were, waddaya know, another 4 godwits!
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| Black-tailed godwit (Limosa limosa) |
Apart from the godwits Wasan didn't turn up anything special. Kolbjorn counted around 260 whistling ducks (I was too lazy to count with him) and there where good numbers of wood sandpiper and long-toed stints. Other notable birds seen where snipe, yellow- and cinnamon bittern, black-winged stilts and a lone greenshank. Noticeably absent were any raptors. We did see and hear some warblers whizzing by on a few occasions but never had prolonged views to nail the ID.
On the way back we saw this blue-necked keelback on the road. The snake was kind enough to stay with us for a few pictures.
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| Blue-necked keelback (Macrophistodon rhodomelas) |
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| Blue-necked keelback (Macrophistodon rhodomelas) |
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| Blue-necked keelback (Macrophistodon rhodomelas) |
A very pretty snake to end a good day with!
Folkert 07/10/2014
The Keelbacks are an attractive family of snakes - we get Red-necked here in HK.
ReplyDeleteKeelbacks are pretty cool, until this encounter I had actually never realized that these snakes are quite venomous.
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