House Swift

These are old photos taken during summer of this year just before I dropped my 3 month old 550D into the mud. There's a small nesting colony of House Swifts (Apus nipalensis) near my part-time job restaurant in Hamawaki (浜脇). There were roughly about 5-7 pairs. They built nests made of dry grass, sticks and other birds' feathers. I personally think it's interesting how these birds collect that much amount of feathers. They don't use their own feathers, but seem to collect them from the muddy river banks nearby. I secretly observed the birds when there was no customer in the restaurant and there was nothing else for me to do. Sometimes I brought my camera with me and took some times taking photos of the swifts after work.

However, it was not easy at all to photograph these birds even at the nests. Because the nest is like a football attached to the ceiling with hollow inside. When the bird arrives at its nest, it mostly just enter through a tiny hole and disappear into the nest. The only time when I could get the whole body of the birds was when they perch at the entrance. Sometimes they spend a long period of time perching there to rest, especially in a rainy day, but normally they don't perch there for too long, so I could only get a few shots with full body. Below set of photos were actually taken by my friend's 5D Mark II. The equipment was great but the birds were not cooperative at all. That day, all of them just kept staying inside their nests.

House Swift (Apus nipalensis)

Just look at the variety of feathers the birds have collected. Isn't it interesting?

A Failed Trip

Nothing much to write about the trip to Wat Thum Pah Plong few weeks ago actually. I went there with my dad and the weather was not so good. We only had just a few hours before the rain began to fall. There were several fruiting trees but not so many birds visited them just because of the bad weather. There's even a fruiting fig tree near the pagoda, but we found exactly no bird coming to eat at all. At least, I saw a Blue-eared Barbet (Megalaima australis) which is not very common around here, coming to eat the fruiting Bohd tree near the parking lot. I've got a few landscape and bird shots to share with all of you here.

Blue-eared Barbet (Megalaima australis)
A view of hill evergreen forest from the pagoda
And a very nice idea preventing the temple's floor from all of the House Swifts' droppings

Stealing Feathers

Another set of photos I took during the visit to Tum Phaplong last weekend. A flock of about 20 House Swifts (Apus affinis) was flying tightly in group when I arrived at the place. I've never seen the birds swifting tightly together like this before and I thought that was quite strange. The flock later dissolved when sunlight began to break through behind the tall mountains. There were several huge Brown-backed Needletails (Hirundapus giganteus) joining the group as well. I know that these House Swifts build their nests in a colony under the temple's roof so I walked in and find one to photograph. Too bad all the birds were inside their nests and flew out as soon as I walked closer to them. Anyway I still found one nest with an adult inside showing its head out of the small hole, so I could grabbed some photos before the bird flew out. Looking at the nests, I've always get fascinated by some details in the combination of the nesting materials. You can see that they use feathers, sticks, leaves and mud to build their nests, but everytime I look carefully into each nest, I often find some strange things like feathers that clearly don't belong to them. I've seen especially lots of green and yellow feathers in the combination, and I am very much puzzled by how these black and white birds got all those colourful feathers. Anyone has the answer to my question?

House of Martins

As I have mentioned earlier in the previous post that a large flock of Asian House-Martin was found hanging around in my campus, today I went to the campus early in the morning in order to pick up my forgotten documents. This time I brought a camera with me, and surprisingly the birds still showed up in the same area, so after I picked up my things, I quickly grabbed some photos of the martins that were flying and perching on the clock tower at the center of the campus. Too bad there was no way for me to get close to the birds, so these shots are just for the record.

I noticed that juvenile birds took up almost 70-80% of the whole flock. They have distinct grey breast band and much duller upperparts, while adult birds have no distinct band on the breast with glossy black upperparts. All the birds flew out of the clock tower around 10am and dispatched to other area. While I was walking around trying to find their new roost, I came across several individuals of Red-rumped Swallow swifting around the football field, along with Barn Swallows and some of the Asian House-Martins. I later found their new roost and it was a high steel tower far away down the hill below the campus. It also seemed like the number of the bird has increased. There were around 200 birds perching all along the wire with many flying all over the places. Pretty soon this flock should disappear to the south as part of the autumn migration. A new phase of birding has started warming up already!

A Bunch of Everything Else

So this post will be a mix of photos I took within last month. There are many photos I've taken and processed but haven't put up here in this blog. Last month's birding mainly covered around Furui-chi and Sekino-e area. There were some interesting migrants passing by during the last week of May. These included Pheasant-tailed Jacana, Whiskered Tern, Cattle Egrets, Red-rumped Swallows and House Swifts. Most of these had already gone except the swift and the swallow which seem to be nesting somewhere around here.

I like the Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis coromandus). It looks so beautiful in the breeding plumage. Too bad there are not so many in Beppu. I only saw 2 birds feeding in the field. One was still in its non-breeding plumage and another one, which is the one in the above photos, has already completed its moult.

About 4-5 male Oriental Reed Warblers (Acrocephalus orientalis) were singing in the reeds both around Furui-chi and Sekino-e areas. These birds are extremely shy. I think they're much more approachable in their wintering grounds like Thailand, for example. I got many photos of this species in Thailand but those shots are not very attractive because the birds always stay close to the ground with messy backgrounds. I have to try harder to get some better shots of them while singing.

I took quite a lot of photos of this Whiskered Tern at Sekino-e. The bird only stayed for 2-3 days but it was quite obliging comparing to other special birds around there. It allowed me to get pretty close to it and often flied close to me. I tried capturing some flight shots but the results were not so good.

It used the rock in a small pond near the field as a resting spot.
Before taking off, the bird always stretches its wings first.

Here's a photo of the lotus field at Sekino-e.

Intermediate Egret

House Swifts

And the below shots were all taken at Asami on the same day I took photos of the Green Pheasant. The place was a small cultivated area located on the hill and bordered with thick forest and city. In the forest, I found several flocks of Red-billed Leiothrix, Siberian Meadow Buntings and surprisingly a Common Kingfisher. It was perching around a small stream in the forest. I've never seen the species in habitat like this before. Lots of Oriental Bush Warblers were singing on treetops in the morning and followed with lots and lots of Lesser Cuckoo's songs.

Red-billed Leiothrix

Oriental Bush Warbler

Here's a fledgling of the Meadow Bunting.

This female Grey Wagtail was very busy collecting foods for her youngs. It seemed like the nest was very far away so I just couldn't follow the bird to see its chicks.

And a panoramic view of Asami area where I photographed the pheasant to finish up with.

Final Phuket

To wrap things up, here's a series of photos taken during the trip to Phuket with my family. I've been back to Beppu for 2 days now, and feel so strange once again about the shift in temperature degrees. It feels so cold here, guess that's because I've gotten used to the 30+ degrees in Thailand. Sakuras are blossoming everywhere and the city looks really colourful. A bit shame that the wind was too strong yesterday, the flower petals fell out of the trees too much in some area.

Muslim students waiting to see sunset at Phromthep Cape

The Phromthep Cape is one of the most famous places to watch sunset in Thailand, maybe the most popular one, because it is located at the westernmost part of the country. Everyday hundreds and hundreds of people flock together before sunset at the top of the hill. It's kinda unbelievable.

A few more shots

We stayed in a resort called Allamanda. It was nice and beautiful.

Though Phuket, the province, is extremely famous for its beautiful beaches,
the Phuket city is also famous for its old and beautifully designed buildings.

I found several House Swift's nesting colony under these old buildings' ceilings.

Such as this.

Southern people love to have birds in their cages, I don't know why. I'm totally against this kind of things and I feel sorry for those wild birds to have been kept in cages. The most popular species is the Red-whiskered Bulbul which was once common throughout the country but finally disappeared from the south because of caging and now they're illegally trade them from the north. The bird in the upper photo is not the Red-whiskered Bulbul, but the also popular White-rumped Shama, a relative of robins.