Chestnut-rumped Babbler

Chestnut-rumped Babbler Stachyris maculata is an active and noisy foliage gleaning insectivore, a common resident throughout Borneo.

Babblers are shy little forest birds, never flying further than necessary and preferring to slip about through the undergrowth near the ground.

The skulking nature of this babbler makes photographing them a real headache. They would just not perch in the open and never remain still even in the cover of the thick jungle undergrowth. Occasional glimpses of them through the thick foliage under the dim forest lighting are the only chances to take their pictures.

Here are a few pictures of them, my lifer (#307 wild birds of Borneo), after losing much hair in the attempt.

 

Happy birding.

Photodocument of Wild Birds of Borneo #307

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Gould's Bronze Cuckoo and Little Bronze Cuckoo

Gould's Bronze Cuckoo Chrysococcyx russatus, a very similar looking bird to Little Bronze Cuckoo Chrysococcyx minutillus. However, Gould's Bronze Cuckoo has a variable amount of buff on the side of the breast and buff edging to the underside of the outer tail feathers, whereas the underside of outer tail feathers of Little Bronze Cuckoo is entirely banded black and white over both webs, and without rufous.

These bronze cuckoos are apparently very common in south and east of Kalimantan as D.A Holmes in his Recent Notes On The Avifauna of Kalimantan (1986), he has more records of bronze cuckoos in the Chrysococcyx "malayanus" group from South and East Kalimantan than from anywhere else in the Sunda Region. [Parker, (1981) demonstrated that C. minutillus, not malayanus, is the correct name for Little Bronze Cuckoo.]

Their taxonomy is still unresolved as some authorities recognise C. russatus as a separate species and others treat C. russatus as a subspecies of  C. minutillus.

Payne (2005), recognised only one species, C. russatus was regarded as a subspecies of C. minutillus. Other authors also recognised these as a single species by putting much weight on their extensive hybridization in Northern Queensland. However, there remain several aspects that need to be resolved before a definitive answer is achieved. Evidence of sympatry (the use of the same or overlapping geographical areas, by populations of related species, without interbreeding) is based on few specimens, and it has not been documented that both forms actually breed in northern Queensland.  A Field guide to the Birds of Borneo by Susan Myers (2009) follows Payne.

Parker's (1981) discovery of specimens of C. minutillus cleis and C. russatus aheneus collected in Borneo from the same locality and in the same month was the main basis for his splitting minutillus and russatus.

Clive F. Mann  in line with Smythies (1999) follow Parker (1981) and keep them separate in his 2009 Annotated Checklist to the Birds of Borneo. Quentin Phillipps follows C.F Mann in maintaining them separate in his Phillipps' Field Guide to the Birds of Borneo (2009).

Here is a  Gould's Bronze Cuckoo's  photo taken in Tawau (my number 306 wild birds of Borneo),  the buff on the underside of the outer tail feathers is evident.

Here is a comparative photo of the Little Bronze Cuckoo showing all black and white underside of the outertail feathers.

Happy birding. 

Photodocument of Wild Birds of Borneo #306

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Additional Reference:
Les Christidi and Walter Boles (2008), Systematics and taxonomy of Australian birds. Australia:CSIRO Publishing.

 

 

Bar-tailed Godwit

Bar-tailed Godwit Limosa lapponica  is a scarce winter visitor and passage migrant, the race in Sabah is Limosa lapponica baueri. 

A single bird was seen and photographed in Tinagat, Tawau on 7th February 2010.

Bar-tailed Godwit is a remarkable bird and has been tracked to make non-stop flight over long distance.

(The following info and map are taken from wikipedia.)

The Bar-tailed Godwit migrates in flocks to coastal western Europe, Africa, South Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

It was shown in 2007 to undertake the longest non-stop flight of any bird. Birds in New Zealand were tagged and tracked by satellite to the Yellow Sea in China. According to Dr. Clive Minton (Australasian Wader Studies Group) "The distance between these two locations is 9,575 kilometres (5,950 mi), but the actual track flown by the bird was 11,026 kilometres (6,851 mi). This is the longest known non-stop flight of any bird. The flight took approximately nine days. At least three other Bar-tailed Godwits also appear to have reached the Yellow Sea after non-stop flights from New Zealand."

 

The routes of satellite tagged Bar-tailed Godwits migrating north from New Zealand

One specific female of the flock, nicknamed "E7", flew onward from China to Alaska and stayed there for the breeding season. Then on 29 August 2007 she departed on a non-stop flight from the Avinof Peninsula in western Alaska to the Piako River near Thames New Zealand, setting a new known flight record of 11,680 kilometres (7,258 mi).

Here are the images of the bird taken in Tinagat, Tawau.In the last picture, you can see that the bird's lower back and rump is heavily barred brown, indicating that this is the baueri race, the nominate race of lapponica would have white lower back and rump.

This is my new bird, however, due to re-identification of one of the birds in my bird images database, my bird count still remain at #305.

Happy birding.

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