The last 15 years – the Highlights

It’s Day ?? (lost count already!) of the COVID19 Lockdown, so, to amuse myself, and to relive memories of some happier times, I’ve decided to update a post I first wrote in 2014 looking at the best birds I’ve found, or been involved in the finding of, over the years.

Finding ‘rarities’ is not what every birder lives for, but for many of us, it’s what keeps us going out, come rain or shine. And, when it happens, there’s little that compares with the adrenaline rush of “finding a big one”. The ultimate is to find a “national first” – a species never previously recorded in the country. In well-birded countries like the UK and the US, it’s a heady experience that few ever savour. Here in Malaysia, with a relatively far smaller population of birders, the odds are higher.

Nowadays, it’s possible to “find a national first” without ever leaving your living room, if you scan enough photos on Facebook. But this post will be confined to birds actually found in the field, starting with one way back in 2006…

2006 Small Buttonquail. Alamander Estate, Kulim, Kedah. 10 July 2006

This was an odd record in every way. The finding of it was odd, for a start. I was on my way home from a birding trip when I saw a large flock of Oriental Pratincoles and Brown-backed Needletails feeding on emergent winged ants. I pulled over and walked across a large area of bare earth which had been cleared to make way for a housing estate. On my way back from observing the needletails and pratincoles, I flushed a tiny buttonquail, which I eventually managed to photograph. I had no idea what it could be at the time, but I eventually concluded, after consulting my Robson, that it must be a Small Buttonquail, formerly known by a name so odd it was a dream-bird of mine in my youth – Andalusian Hemipode! Oddest of all was its presence in northern Peninsular Malaysia. Robson records that it is a ‘scarce to local resident’ no closer than Central Thailand, but that it is ‘subject to some movements’. Subsequent observations at the site found at least 4 birds to be present, and breeding was noted, before the last record on 2 July 2008, after which the habitat became unsuitable. Subsequently, Small Buttonquail has been found to be a sparse but widespread resident of Peninsular Malaysia, with additional records from Perlis, Pulau Pinang, Perak and Selangor.

2007 Rosy Minivet. Bintang Hijau Forest Reserve, Perak. 1 January 2007

The year 2007 was barely 10 hours old when Tan Choo Eng and I set eyes on a strange minivet with pale yellow underparts, which we identified as a Rosy Minivet, in a flock of Ashy Minivets, as we birded around a logging camp close to the Thai border. The flock moved rapidly and we had a hard time keeping the bird in sight long enough to get photos and notice salient details. We relocated the flock and the bird later in the day, and Choo Eng came back and photographed a male at the same site on 11 Feb. A fuller account of our visit is here, and a here’s a better photo of the original bird by Choo Eng.

There have subsequently been single records from Perlis and Pulau Pinang.

2008 – a blank year!

At least as far as national firsts was concerned. However, this was compensated for somewhat by publishing, with Peter Kennerley, the first paper on a mysterious bird which we began by calling White-faced Plover. The paper, Field characteristics and distribution of an overlooked Charadrius plover from South-East Asia, appeared in BirdingASIA 9. Later, we tried to rename it Swinhoe’s Plover in recognition of the taxon’s original discoverer, Robert Swinhoe (in 1870!), but it looks like the original name stuck.

The most recently-published study of the taxon  concludes that White-faced Plover is a valid species, and it is recognised as such by HBW and BirdLife, with a threat listing of DD (Data Deficient).

2009 Pied Avocet. Kampung Buntal, Sarawak. 10 Jan 2009

This is one first I cannot truly claim to have found – that honour goes to Daniel Kong, who excitedly gestured to me to take look through his scope when I arrived at Kampung Buntal at the beginning of the field component of a wader workshop. I found myself looking at a familiar bird in an unfamiliar setting! Pied Avocets are ‘ten a penny’ back in the UK where I grew up, but seeing one on the windswept coast of north Borneo in the company of a Malaysian Plover was truly exciting! The bird stayed for one more day. Since then, there have been a few more records, in Sabah. Peninsular Malaysia still awaits its first.

2010 Blyth’s Pipit. Chuping, Perlis. 7 Jan 2010

I nearly missed this one altogether! Choo Eng, Hakim and I were driving slowly along a track in light rain at Chuping with the windows down when we heard an unfamilar call. We stopped and I looked back in the direction from which the call came and saw this pipit. I took about half a dozen shots, but the bird didn’t strike me as being anything other than a Paddyfield Pipit (I could make excuses, like I was craning my neck at an awkward angle, and looking through the camera viewfinder etc!). The bird then flew off, making a very Paddyfield Pipit-like call (to my ears). Dismissing this bird as not being the originator of the odd call, I got out of the car and wandered about for a while in the rain, flushing it several more times, but hearing nothing other than what I took to be Paddyfield Pipit calls. Eventaully I got back in the car and we drove on. It wasn’t till a couple of weeks later when I was reviewing my photos on the computer monitor that I realized that the bird did not really resemble a Paddyfield Pipit at all! Full details of the differences are here. Although I was glad to have clinched this first, I also kicked myself for not realizing what I was seeing at the time, thereby missing a great opportunity to study the bird at more length. We went back to look for it later but were unsuccessful. Fortunately, I got a second chance at this one (see below).

2010 Short-tailed Shearwater. At sea, off Tanjung Dawai, Kedah. 10 May 2010.

In contrast to the other firsts, which were generally unforeseen, this was a more expected but nonetheless satisfying end to a birding conundrum that Choo Eng and I had been working out for a few years. Ever since we had started hitching rides on the local anchovy boats going out from Tanjung Dawai, the fishermen had been telling us about ‘little black ducks’ that arrive in offshore waters in May and June most years.

We had figured out what they must be, but they had eluded us until I took this solo trip, when I saw several ‘ducks’ and was able to confirm their identity as Short-tailed Shearwaters at last. Since then, we’ve been able to confirm that they are annual migrants occurring in small numbers off the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia in May-June.

2011 Little Gull. At sea, off Tanjung Dawai, Kedah. 13 Oct 2011.

If the Short-tailed Shearwaters were expected, this little beauty certainly wasn’t! I wouldn’t have even gone on the boat that day had not Gerry Brett, visiting from Thailand, asked me to take him out. I was thinking I might be able to show Gerry a few hundred terns and possibly a Whale Shark if we were lucky (we were!), but this apparition in my bins in late afternoon was so ‘impossible’ that, even though I recognized it immediately, I struggled to put a name to it! Our views were brief but conclusive, and one minute of magic had suddenly made the whole day worthwhile! This was not only a first for Malaysia, but just the second for the whole of South-east Asia, and probably the rarest of the rarities I’ve found so far.

2012 Citrine Wagtail. Chuping, Perlis. 23 Jan 2012

This was almost a Blyth’s Pipit anniversary visit. Same place, same month, but another year on and another first for Malaysia! On our drive north, Hakim and I talked about the possibility of finding one of these. On arrival, we came across a field full of Eastern Yellow Wagtails and set about unearthing a Citrine. This one didn’t give itself up too easily, and it was a long time before we were confident that this extremely worn individual was indeed what we were hoping it would be! A long overdue and rather expected addition to the national list. More photos and a longer account here. There have been one or two birds seen since this one.

2013 Oriental Skylark, Chuping, Perlis. 21 Nov 2013

I left it rather late in the year to nab this national first, and again, it was largely due to the help of Choo Eng. Chuping was once again the venue. I had spotted an unidentified lark in a large ploughed field, but it required calling in the cavalry, in the form of Choo Eng, James Ooi and Kit Wan, to relocate not one, but three of the beasts, and identify them, on further scrutiny and hearing of the flight call, as Oriental Skylarks! I found another one at the same site on 10 Jan 2015, but there have been none since.

2014 Brahminy Starling, Chuping, Perlis. 29 Dec 2014

If my national first in 2013 was late, this one was almost literally last minute! As I drove along a rough track at Chuping I found myself confronted by a bird whose colour scheme I did not immediately recognize. A quick look through the bins solved the mystery – a Brahminy Starling. Taking a couple of shots through the windscreen for insurance, I then slowly tried to manoeuvre myself into position for a better shot. The bird was extremely wary however, and flew off and over some tall grass out of sight. As the species was on Category D of the Malaysian list, I was not too bothered about trying to refind the bird. This proved a mistake, as I later found, from reading Wells and in conversation with fellow birders in Thailand, that it is more likely to have been a genuine vagrant, especially as one turned up in Petchaburi Province on 24 Dec 2014. Luckily it hung around into 2015 and I was able to get better views, and it was eventually accepted onto Cat A. Later that year, there was a second bird, a juvenile, also at Chuping.

2015 Willow Warbler, Pulau Mantanani, Sabah. 23 October 2015

In 2015 I attempted a Malaysia Big Year, and 23 October sticks in my mind not only because I reached 600 species on that day, but also because Mike Turnbull, Yann Muzika and I found a Willow Warbler – not only a national first but only the second or third record for all of South-east Asia.

Mike, Yann and I had decided to visit the island for a few days at the end of a Sabah tour in the hope of finding rarities. We were working the scrubby bushes around the football field when Mike called our attention to a warbler which had just emerged into some dead branches at the edge of a bush. It was immediately obviously something new, and we cycled through a couple of possibilities before quite quickly realising we were looking at…a Willow Warbler! This is a species all of us are familiar with from Europe, but it was not exactly what we were expecting to see in Borneo! The bird sat motionless, other than repeatedly flicking its tail, as we edged around to get a better angle. As we did so, a Japanese Sparrowhawk made a dash for the warbler and pulled out at the last moment as it became aware of us. The warbler froze, apparently in shock, for several minutes, enabling us to get lots of photos before it eventually flew off to an adjoining bush. We took a few moments to compare notes and revel in the rush of adrenaline at having found a ‘mega’ rarity, reflecting that our attention had probably also saved the Willow Warbler’s life!

There’s not been one since, but that trip proved to be the catalyst for further autumn pilgrimages to the island, in 2018 and 2019 (see below).

2016 – a blank year!

2016 was a bit of a hangover after my Big Year exertions. I only submitted 97 checklists to eBird the whole year, compared to 386 the previous year, and so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that I didn’t find any outstanding rarities.

2017 – another blank year

Blank as far as “firsts” were concerned. However, I did manage a national second – and my second Blyth’s Pipit. The circumstances were amazingly similar to the first. Again I was in my car, driving slowly with the windows down. Again I heard an unfamiliar call, stopped and located the caller. This time the location was Malim Nawar, Perak, and the date, 28 Jan. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice, so I made sure I grilled the calling bird thoroughly, and as I did so, was delighted to discover that I was looking at a stunning Blyth’s Pipit. The bird had in fact been photographed on 2 Jan, and it remained faithful to the site until at least 7 Apr, enabling many people to familiarise themselves with this subtle and beautiful pipit, and for us to observe it complete its moult before departure.

Maybe one reason I didn’t manage to find a national first that year was that I spent 6 months of it out of the country. Our family did spend a memorable month in Ireland and Northern Ireland in September, which was our first visit to the “Emerald Isle”. No national firsts, but I did come across a bevy of nice American waterbirds, including four in five days!

The first was a Long-billed Dowitcher, which I found at Bannow Bay, Wexford on 28 Aug.

Tacumshin, Wexford, is a location name familiar to wader watchers across the UK, mostly from the regularity with which it features in Rarity Reports. It had long been my ambition to visit, and Killian Mullarney had very kindly offered to show me round. Just the next day, we were walking back from having spent an enjoyable afternoon there when a long-winged wader flew over our heads, calling. Killian immediately called it as a “Lesser Goldie”, and, once it had pitched down on the far side, scope views confirmed that it was a lovely adult American Golden Plover. Barely two minutes later, it took flight, climbed high into the sky, and was gone!

The following day, the family and I were driving to a pub for lunch when we crossed a stream leading out onto the beach at Duncannon. Though it was a little hard to pull the car off the narrow road, the stream looked to have potential, and I was on a roll, so we risked it, and were rewarded by a beautiful juvenile Pectoral Sandpiper feeding on the wrack with several White Wagtails!

Heady days! To cap it all off, just a couple of days later I was watching the dowitcher again when I got a call from Killian at Tacumshin to say he was watching a Semipalmated Sandpiper. As I was on my way, he called again to say that a Baird’s Sandpiper had now joined it! Having got me onto both birds, Killian had to leave, and I was left to savour the scene all to myself. As I was enjoying the Baird’s Sandpiper, it was joined by a second, more richly-coloured bird – my 4th self-found American wader in 5 days!

2018 Eastern Spot-billed Duck, Tempasuk, Sabah. 1 November 2018

2018 saw an idea conceived in 2015 finally come to fruition – a team of 6 of us headed to Pulau Mantanani specifically to look for migrants and rarities. Before we even set foot on the island, we (Chin Choong Liung, Khoo Swee Seng, Carol Ho, Rafi Kudus, Chris Gibbins and I) found a national first in the form of a male Eastern Spot-billed Duck, at Tempasuk Plain, on 1 Nov. Sadly for the many Sabahan birders who searched for it, it was never seen again … or was it? A pair turned up at Tempasuk in November 2019, so perhaps he came back and brought a friend?

Japanese Night-Heron, Pulau Mantanani, 5-6 November 2018

My initial views of this bird at a smelly refuse tip enabled me to identify it only as a subadult Gorsachius sp.

Over lunch, the team decided that there was a good chance that the bird might come back, so Chris, Rafi and myself staked out the rubbish dump in the afternoon. After we had endured the stench and mosquitoes for some time, Chris spotted the bird as it cautiously emerged from the undergrowth, and decent photos were obtained.

In the evening, we pored over the several reference books we had brought but were unsuccessful in reaching a firm conclusion, partly because we were confused by the bird’s age.  The enigma was solved by Rafi very early the next morning. Unable to sleep, he looked though the books again, and realised that the reason we had not been able to find any pictures of “2^nd year plumage” is because it doesn’t exist! Birds moult from juvenile to adult-like plumage in their second year. Once it became clear that our bird was a juvenile, and that the juvenile plumages of Japanese and Malayan are quite distinct, it became a simple matter to identify the bird as a juvenile Japanese Night-Heron. Liung, Seng and Carol had failed to see the bird well the previous day, so returned to the site on the morning of the 6^th with fresh urgency, and they had excellent views of the bird despite the grim viewing conditions provided by the stench and mosquitoes! We left the island that afternoon; the bird could well have stayed longer.

Although there had been previous records from Brunei, we thought at the time that this was a first record for Malaysia. Later we found photos of an adult Japanese Night Heron from the Crocker Range on eBird, taken in 2014, so it became the second!

2019 Pale-legged Leaf Warbler, Perlis State Park. 19 Feb 2019

Pale-legged Leaf Warbler has had a convoluted history on the Malaysian list. For years, it was regarded as a scarce migrant and winter visitor, especially to the northern states of the Peninsula. Then, following the split of this species and a sister taxon, Sakhalin Leaf Warbler, it was removed from the national list, as there were no records with sufficient evidence to unequivocally eliminate Sakhalin.

This was the situation when James Eaton and I were visiting Perlis State Park to look at Iole bulbuls. Initially, we heard and saw a Sakhalin Leaf Warbler, and then James picked up a higher-pitched call which was mostly outside my diminishing hearing range. We were able to locate the bird and James recorded its call. It was then a simple matter of pulling his laptop out of the car, transferring the recording onto it, making a sonograph and checking the pitch of the call! This was done in a matter of minutes, and the sonograph clearly showed that the call was outside the pitch range of Sakhalin and within that of Pale-legged. Sakhalin produces a single, sharp but slightly flat call between 4.5-5.2kHz, while Pale-legged produces a higher-pitched call, more of a tink, between 5.6-5.9kHz.
Later that day, we found another nearby, and the following day, still another in Kedah.

We didn’t get any photos of the birds – they’re indistinguishable from Sakhalin in physical appearance anyway! The records are still under assessment by the MNS BCC Records Committee at the time of writing, but if accepted, they would be a first for Malaysia.

Woolly-necked Stork, Sungai Balang, Johor. 29 Dec 2019.

Another late, late show for the year! I was in Melaka for a family New Year get-together, and took the opportunity to visit the area of paddy fields known as Sungai Balang, which had been turning up some good birds recently.

All was fairly quiet till just after 10am, when a crane-like bird flew in from the coast and pitched down in some distant fields. By that time, I had identified it, somewhat incredulously, as a Woolly-necked Stork – not actually a first for Malaysia, but the first since before the 1930s!

I was able to watch it for the next 2.5 hours as it fed furiously in the wake of a tractor ploughing a field, in  company of about 100 Lesser Adjutants. Only one other birder was on site, and I was able to point the bird out to him. Others immediately set out from as far away as KL, but sadly, the bird took flight at about 12.30pm and was never seen again.

2020 Booted Warbler, Langkap, Perak. 12 Feb 2020

This year I was fortunate in being able to get the monkey off my back early on. I was actually on my way home from an extreme twitch –  from Penang – to see two Spotted Redshanks way down in southern Pahang. Langkap had been on my radar for a few weeks, as it was pulling in good numbers of Aquila eagles, so I decided to break journey there on my way back north.

At 11 am, I had been sat in my car, photographing a male Siberian Stonechat. Having had my fill of the stonechat, I started the car and began to drive slowly along a bund between two paddy fields, scanning the irrigation ditch on my right for signs of life. Almost immediately, within a few metres of starting, I caught sight of a pale brown bird, smaller than a shrike, moving around in sparse low scrub on the opposite bank of the ditch. With the engine still running, I lifted my binoculars to look at it, and immediately realized that I had something unusual. The bird was a pale, milky tea-coloured warbler, paler than any of the local species. I switched off my engine and immediately moved to my camera.

My first thought was that the bird was a Booted Warbler, and, as I looked through my viewfinder, what I could see confirmed my initial suspicions. The bird’s behaviour was not furtive, so after obtaining some photos I cautiously moved the car closer. It appeared unconcerned by the approach of my vehicle, and I continued to obtain more photos. Since the bird seemed well settled in its patch of vegetation, once I had what I considered a sufficient number of photos, I decided to alert other birders who might want to see the bird. Having sent the message, I looked up to find that the bird had disappeared. Not overly concerned, I started the car and began driving slowly along the bund. I quickly refound the bird, but it was flying along the ditch, and disappeared where three small oil palms were growing on the bank. This proved to be the last anyone saw of it, much to the frustration of those who came from as far away as Melaka to search for it.

This was a first record for Malaysia, and the third for South-east Asia after records in recent years in Singapore and Thailand. Hopefully, it won’t be long before another shows up.

Although I’ve said that these birds and the memories of them are the “highlights” of the last 15 years, there have been many other highlights too. The great thing about birding, as Forrest Gump might have said, is “Birding is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get!” But they’re all good!