I managed to record a new lifer, Grey-tailed Tattler Heteroscelis brevipes.
A section of the hundreds of Great Knot, which is the commonest waders here.
Grey-tailed Tattler, my lifer.
Two Great Egrets, showing the range in size.
Lesser Frigatebird, L to R, adult ♀, adult ♂ and immature.
Eurasian Curlew
Eurasian Curlew, showing its diagnostic white rump.
Broad-billed Sandpiper
Terek Sandpiper
Bar-tailed Godwit with a Great Knot
Pond Heron, suspected to be Chinese instead of Javan as they are only around during the northern winter, however, it is not possible to positively confirm in this eclipse plumage.
Common Redshank
A composite of diving Little Tern
A Mangrove Skink Emoia atrocostata
Common Greenshank
Far-eastern Curlew.
Happy birding.
Photodocument of Wild Birds of Borneo.
Standard References for my blog.
5 comments:
A nice collection of waterbirds. Congrats on your Tattler. It just so happen that I also just got mine a few weeks back in Penang.
very nice collection Mr. Wong! Your Pond Heron looks like a breeding plumage Javan to me. More interesting though are the Great Egrets, the larger bird is probably a migrant of the much larger race alba which would be a new subspecies for Borneo I think. It is possible that the two will be split again as Eastern (modesta) and Western (alba) Great Egrets......
Nice observation there, Chris Kehoe, I have never thought of that as the alba race. According to Brazil this race winters furthest south to islands in southern Japan, so I think it is quite unlikely to come here. There were a number of Great Egrets around on that day, I did not notice this bird as particularly bigger than the rest, but when these two were close to each other, I noticed one was much smaller than the other. May be I got a pair of birds that were on both end of their size range.
Hi Wong
I think Chris may be right though. Check the different leg colour too. I sent you an email about recently.
Dave
hi all,
provided with this Great Egret alba vs modesta thingy going, I found this photo in Korea, and the size comparison seemed to be something interesting: http://www.birdskorea.org/Images/images2005/modestaandalba22octkimhyuntae.jpg
For full account, look for it from this link: http://www.birdskorea.org/Birds/Birdnews/BK-BN-Review-2005.shtml
I doubt such size difference could had been from the same subspecies provided that both sexes of Great Egrets, especially nesting ones, had not been noticed to have significant difference, what shocked me is that the difference was quite obvious when placed side by side!
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