Should we spend a whole day birding in a busy concrete jungle with a forecast of rain to boot? Or just relax in the hotel room? We had a day's break between the end of a conference in Kuala Lumpur and our departure flight and reluctantly decided to cast our laziness aside and try our luck birding.
Our guide Cheong Weng Chun coaxed us into an early morning rise and took us straight to Ulu Langat, a lovely little reserved forest in the hills to the east of the city where bird calls greeted us. I could recognize the Barbets (Gold-whiskered and Sooty) but it took Cheong's trained ears and eyes to identify the calls and then spot the rarer gems: the Black-and-red and Black-and-yellow Broadbills, stunners by any standards. A Chestnut-breasted Malkoha hopped in ungainly fashion in the upper canopy. The aptly named Long-billed Spiderhunter extended its bill almost between adjacent twigs. The Orange-bellied and Crimson-breasted Flowerpeckers vied with each other for the award of most colorful underbelly. A third broadbill species, the Banded, rounded off the walk.
As we left the many Sunday morning bathers in the stream cascading down from the forest and headed into the upper reaches of the dense tropical rainforest, the stream became a veritable kingfisher photo-op. First the Blue-eared Kingfisher and then, the rare Malaysian Blue-banded! Photographers clicked away. Two shrieking Woodpeckers, Banded and Buff-necked announced their presence.
The predicted rain most conveniently started just as we dragged ourselves off from Ulu Langat and got into our car for lunch, with a count of 39 species. We thought it couldn't get better than this but I was mistaken. A stop in a patch of woodland in a residential neighborhood adjoining a park yielded a massive Barred Eagle-owl, who scrutinized us lazily with his bottomless huge eyes. A tiny Sunda Pygmy Woodpecker pecked away on twigs nearby.
We finally headed off to our last destination: a patch of mangrove forest on the west coast. A trio of lovely green Laced Woodpeckers kept us entertained for a while. And then we heard it: the distinctive two-toned call of a pitta! Moments later we experienced a once in a lifetime moment: the rare and unbelievably pretty Mangrove Pitta perched just a few meters away. Time stood still, allowing us to click away.
As the sun faded and we headed back to our
hotel, guess opting for a day of birding was a right call: do the same when you
go to KL next!
 |
| Barred Eagle-Owl by Cheong Weng Chun |
 |
| Malaysian Blue-banded Kingfisher by Cheong Weng Chun |
 |
| Mangrove Pitta by Cheong Weng Chun |
No comments:
Post a Comment