Malaysia: The Birds!

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Malaysia: The Birds!

January 26, 2019 by Stumblingpiper

We made a short stop through Malaysia (6 days) over the New Year. We were focused on bird-watching this trip. We stayed in Kuala Lumpur but had trips scheduled with a guide to two separate areas: Kuala Selangor and Fraser’s Hill. We were very lucky that Bird Malaysia had assigned as our tour guide Andrew Sebastian.

He is a freelance guide and runs a nonprofit for conservation issues — here’s his website: https://www.ecomy.org/

Wow … did he provide fantastic bird outings! I can’t say enough about Andrew — he was fun, funny, kind, and very considerate. However, at the same time he was serious about birding. We were fortunate enough to identify 150 birds in 3 days … 86 of which were new to me. Our first trip was to Kuala Selangor and we started early …0730! We commenced upon a whirlwind trip that saw us returning back to the hotel around 9:30 pm. We visited Selangor Nature Park to begin and immediately started knocking off great birds on our list.

The Common Flameback Woodpecker … see the “flame” color?

Here he is from the front!This is the Laced Woodpecker …This is the Sunda Pygmy Woodpecker … just a wee fellow!Check out the Shrimp this White-throated Kingfisher has in its beak.

He was giving it a good whack on the branch to kill it so he could eat it!

A beautiful Grey Heron.A Mangrove Blue Flycatcher.Andrew leading the way and checking for snakes … it was extremely warm already!A final shot of the common kingfisher.

From there we went to the coast and identified a few more.

The striated heron.A lovely black-capped kingfisher.Some Redshanks.On our way out to the Rice Paddies we stumbled upon this Dollarbird.

We enjoyed our time at the rice paddies with a late afternoon / evening scan for ground birds and accipiters. Success as well!

A white-breasted waterhen.Check it out: 4 Snipes!Common Sandpiper.Great Egret.Greater Sand Plover.Lesser Sand Plover.Beautiful Purple Heron.An elusive Cinnamon Bittern.The Sandpiper checking me out.

The Eastern Marsh Harrier, Peregrine Falcon, Black-shouldered Kite, and White-bellied Sea Eagle were amazing. Great birding …

Marsh Harrier on the attack!Peregrine Falcon relaxing in the evening.Another view of the falcon.The White-bellied Sea Eagle.This Black-shouldered Kite was building a nest.Here he is perched in a tree.Those red eyes! So brilliant!

We finished up with another walk in complete darkness at the Nature Park to try and see an owl. No luck. However, as we were driving to see a fire-fly display we spotted an owl flying overhead. We quickly stopped and Andrew identified it for us as I tried to snap a couple of photos. Cool.

This is as good as it gets with my P900 at night … unless I have super bright light.

We were so excited (and tired) that we decided to skip the fireflies. What a great day! We saw a total of 74 birds this day. Awesome!

We had a couple of days off (thank goodness!) to recover before we started the adventure again–this time to Fraser’s Hill … we were spending a day-and-a-half here (which stretched out into two days). The birding started immediately … although it started slow, we sped up and were seeing plenty of birds by the end.

We worked our way up the hill. Andrew told us that the birds would come in “waves” … so we needed to place ourselves in the right location. We did that several times over the two days.

The Little Bronze Cuckoo.The Ochraceous Bulbul … like an old man. Check out the frog in this White-throated Kingfisher’s mouth. See the Red eye? This is the Spectacled Bulbul.This lovely bird is a bar-winged flycatcher-shrike.I spotted this guy hiding away … a yellow-vented pigeon.I caught this late … a black and crimson oriole.Who doesn’t like a Drongo?This beautiful bird is called a Large Niltava.This is the female.A rufous-browed flycatcher.

So many beautiful birds … and this was just the start. We made our way around Fraser’s Hill two or three times over the next couple of days. Andrew even took us over a slight defect in the road … here’s a shot of it. Fortunately, we survived! Looking at it, you wouldn’t think you could drive a car there …

The birds were stunning. Most of the time we were on the move looking … however, we did wait a couple of hours to see this partridge. It is endemic to the area — you can only see it here in Malaysia. Success!

Here are some of the brilliant birds we saw up on the Hill.

The Silver-eared Mesia.The chestnut-capped Laughingthrush.Maroon Woodpecker.The Blue Nuthatch … check out the eyes!The fire-tufted Barbet.The Streaked Spiderhunter.The Blue-throated Bee eater.The Slaty-backed Forktail.The Red-bearded Bee eater.