I preface the blog with an image of a bird I have been trying to get for the last 10 years. It is a Plaintive Cuckoo and has a distinctive 'descending notes' call. They are a species that inhabits broken grasslands and where I shoot the bee-eaters I hear them often but they are a closet species. One obliged me this week by flying onto a perch right in front of me. Persistence pays of....sometimes
The April blog has been a bit delayed because
my desktop Mac needed some hospital treatment. Fortunately the problem was
quickly diagnosed and it is now back in place. A graphics card was the
offending component and Apple couriered a new one out from the US and the whole
thing cost me nothing. The Mac is three years old. It allowed me to clean up
and modify, which I have just about done.
Helen was away in Spain and Portugal with Dani
and her sister Ann for three weeks. Running the house and walking the curly one
was relatively easy but there were a few bumps in the road. My credit card was
cancelled without me being informed because there was a dubious transaction for
5USD. They then took 10 days to get me a new one despite saying it would be
couriered. During the time without my card the car was serviced and they don’t
accept cheques!!!
We also had a booking for the BnB rooms for 10
days. A Chinese man from Indonesia came to Penang for a heart bypass…..his wife
was with him all the time and various other members of the family came and
went. There was no major problem but during there stay I could not do my
morning shoots. I ferried the folks to
the hospital most mornings which is 5 minutes away without traffic lights……or
driving like a Malaysian. There is quite an industry at the heart centre with people coming and going with wheelie suitcases.....more active than the airport arrivals. It is popular with the Indonesian Chinese community with the whole package costing $10,000US
My friend Nick from Singapore was also in
Penang for a week and we explored some new locations as well as going to the
tried and true ones. While the guests were here I also had another couple of
Singaporeans stay for 2 nights. They were at a conference in the E and O Hotel
and could not afford to stay there after the event. I got to sleep at a higher altitude.
The nearby Botanic Gardens had a few visits in lieu of longer trips.
It is not too bad, not a patch on Singapore’s but it is in a blush-clad embrace
by a hill that surrounds it on three sides. I was stalking a Dusky Langur family
that had an orange baby. My last sighting verified the baby had grown and was
now mainly brown. There are always plenty of Long-tailed macaques there and they
have cute babies too…..especially when they are small.
I am trying to get a broader view of the
bee-eaters by using my still camera but three other video devices; my still camera shoots good video, a
camcorder and the GoPro camera, which is quite amazing for its size. I have an
app on my Ipad that can control the camera at a distance and see what it is
seeing. I have made several progressive chick-eye view of the feeding by taking
still images from the video and making a montage with them. This possibly gives
the best view as motion in real time is pretty fast.
There is still some Chestnut Bee-eaters
nesting….on their second round while the Blue-throated Bee-eaters are currently
in the egg incubation phase, which takes around 28 days.
I was very successful last year with the
Kingfishers nesting but they have failed this year and despite more mating and
looking at new holes they seemed to have given up for this year. 2012 was not
successful either. Part of the reason may be that the Red-wattled Lapwings also nest on open ground at the same time and are very protective of the potential brood. They and the Kingfishers are constantly harassing each other. The Kingfishers need to find food on the ground and may and been bombed too often to gather enough...they also go on retaliatry strafing runs.
The Blue-throated Bee-eaters possibly number around 200 and they drill holes everywhere. Not just in the mounds but in the flat areas as well. They were pigging out on Tuesday chasing flying ants.....like a lolly scramble.
I have been to other locations and several
times noted a wraith-like figure going to a hole in a tree. It was dark in the
pre-dawn but it looked like an owl shape. The hole was beautifully lined up
with the morning sun and I decided to stake it out for an hour. There was no action until a young family came
along……there were 13 in a Proton saga. Anyway the owl came out to see what the
noise was about…..it was a Barn Owl……I often see one on my morning walks. Their
flight is totally noiseless as they descend on rodents. A worker said a baby owl had fallen from the nest a
few days earlier and they had taken it to a game warden. There were several
other species of owls in the vicinity but I did not get a shot of them. As the
sun rises the sky is filled with Open-billed Storks flying to a grazing
location. They were not considered residents of Peninsular Malaysia until last
year. They like eating snails in the paddy fields. The other two birds are a Mangrove Blue Flycatcher and a Forest Wagtail (on the wall)
On the home front the upstairs garden is doing well.
Always a joy to sit there in the morning and evening. Coco likes to get her
vitamin D there as well. The mega flower has still been heading towards the
heavens. It is currently throwing out offshoots that will be flowers. They look
a little pathetic currently on a 20 plus foot stalk. The heliconias and the
hibiscus are both doing well. One
hibiscus is a deep red and looks so nice. I took a shot of one flower and put
it on my website……it has more hits than any other image in the last month.
There must be a lot of closet florists around.
Cokie has been a nice companion in the three
weeks Helen was away…….she really likes running free so I try to find her a
place she can do that. She is growing up and now has a cleavage.
