A Bulbuls Day

I still have some more photos from my new year vacation in Thailand that haven't been put it into this blog. These photos are from a one-day trip to Doi Angkang with my father. The weather was fine but temperature was not as low as I thought. Most people had left the mountain since the holiday was already over. Not so many birds actually, but I did managed to get some nice shots of my all time favorite bird of Doi Angkang, the Crested Finchbill (Spizixos canifrons), and the commoner yet difficult to get good pics, Brown-breasted Bulbul (Pycnonotus xanthorrhous).

Brown-breasted Bulbuls feeding on a fruiting tree

The birds were enjoying these yellowish fruits on the fruiting tree just on the roadside. The Brown-breasted was the most numerous with 2 Crested Finchbills, several Red-whiskered and Flavescent and a Sooty-headed Bulbul. I also found a pair of Mountain Bamboo-Partridge (Bambusicola fytchii) nearby but wasn't able to capture their photo.

I was so happy to photograph these two Crested Finchbills closely.

Then came a Sooty-headed Bulbul.

Along the road were countless blossoming Pink Cassia attracting lots of Chestnut-flanked, Japanese and Oriental White-eye. I spent few minutes chasing a male Orange-bellied Leafbird (Chloropsis hardwickii) which came to feed on the cassia's nectar. I was super surprised to witness the bird mimicing the call of the Oriental Magpie Robin and Sooty-headed Bulbul. It's the first time for me to know that this leafbird can also mock other birds' voices. Before going back, I stopped at the fruiting tree again to see if there's any visitors and finally got a very shy White-browed Laughingthrush (Garrulax sannio), a bird once so common but rarely seen nowadays.

A male Orange-bellied Leafbird

A secretive Green-billed Malkoha

A male Grey Bushchat in its full breeding plumage

And the very wary White-browed Laughingthrush

And some sceneric shots to finish off with.

The Last Time

It was September 13 when I last visited Doi Angkang before coming back to Japan. As I have said in earlier blog that it started raining again after the weather began to be sunny for quite a long while. I mainly walked around the same area where I did birdwatching a week before. The fruiting persimmon trees were still attracting all kinds of bulbul very well. I tried so hard on photographing my favorite Crested Finchbill and sort of failed as usual. There were Brown-breasted, Red-whiskered, Sooty-headed, Flavescent and Black Bulbuls around the area. A flock of White-browed Laughingthrush and Rusty-cheeked Scimitar-Babblers were also moving around in low bushes with their noisy calls. A new comer was the Arctic Warbler (Phylloscopus borealis) which was feeding along with the resident White-tailed Leaf-Warbler (Phylloscopus davisoni) near the persimmon tree. However, I couldn't get any decent shot of it.

The best I could get from this unique Crested Finchbill

A Brown-breasted Bulbul visitting persimmon tree

And a record shot of the Arctic Warbler

I was surprised to see a small flock of Yellow-eyed Babbler consisting of mainly immature birds. I usually see this babbler in lowland cultivated area or wetlands, but not on high mountains like this. Another pale morph juvenile Oriental Honey-Buzzard of the season soared over my head with a much smaller juvenile Chinese Goshawk (Accipiter soloensis), which was trying to attack the honey-buzzard all the time.

The secretive Yellow-eyed Babbler

Last time I saw so many Brown Shrikes but this time only one juvenile bird was seen. However, two Grey-backed Shrikes (Lanius tephronotus) have arrived, so as the White Wagtails (Motacilla alba). At noon, rain started to fall too hard for birdwatching so I had to go back home. Along the way came a nice group of Ashy Woodswallows on the same dead tree. This time with the heavy rainfall, it looked more artistic than ever.

A pair of Ashy Woodswallows doing courtship display

A female Burmese Shrike from Ban Arunothai

The only Brown Shrike seen, a juvenile

Pre-winter at Doi Angkang

September at Doi Angkang is my favorite! The morning sky is ultramarine, yet the thick fog at noon helps cool down the heat from sunlight. Rain falls in the evening and at night, brings fresh cool atmosphere to the early morning forests. Birds might not be as plenty as in winter, but they seem to be out continuously all day, and surely, seeing new migrants excites me every time I come here.

A male Stripe-breasted Woodpecker on a fruiting Castanopsis tree.

The castanopsis (chinquapin or chinkapin) trees were fruiting and some children were walking around collecting its spiny cupule for the nuts. Few bird-waves came near the roadsides. There were a tiny Grey-capped Pygmy-Woodpecker (Dendrocopos canicapillus) feeding alongside with a flock of Scarlet Minivets (Pericrocotus flammeus) and a cute pair of Grey-headed Canary-Flycatchers (Culicicapa ceylonensis), a Maroon Oriole was also calling from somewhere inside the bush. Grey Treepies (Dendrocitta formosae) were very active and vocal. They perched on open treetops and sing their ugly comical call. Also a lone Forest Wagtail (Dendronanthus indicus) was found once again for the second time of this year's migration.

An individual with pale yellowish iris

Another individual with brownish iris, a younger bird?

A Grey Treepie singing on a castanopsis tree

A small flock of White-browed Scimitar-Babbler (Pomatorhinus schisticeps) was busy feeding in a thick castanopsis tree. After a long while, two birds flew out to low bushes and started singing. One of the bird has pale yellowish eye and sings continuously, while another bird obviously has dark brown eyes and tends stay in thick cover. My guess is that the brown-eyed individual might be a young bird which doesn't or still can't sing very well since some research I've seen also pointed out that most bird irises get paler with age. Along the way I was surprised to see so many Brown Shrikes (Lanius cristatus), most are males. White-browed Laughingthrushes (Garrulax sannio) were also seen as usual. Persimmon trees were also fruiting, attracting all kinds of bulbuls around the area to come and join the meal. Most of them were Crested Finchbill (Spizixos canifrons) and Brown-breasted Bulbul (Pycnonotus xanthorrhous). Some Flavescent and Sooty-headed Bulbuls also joined in sometimes. These bulbuls are fast and wary, so photographing them was quite a hard job.

A young adult Crested Finchbill

A male Brown Shrike subspecies 'L.c.confusus'

A variant juvenile pale morph Oriental Honey-Buzzard

Some other birds I found that morning include a young Oriental Honey-Buzzard (Pernis ptilorhyncus), several resident-form S.s.przewalskii Eastern Stonechats, Grey Bushchats, Rusty-cheeked Scimitar-Babbler (Pomatorhinus erythrogenys) and few Fork-tailed Swifts (Apus pacificus) subspecies 'cooki' which breeds here at Doi Angkang. The surprise of the day was a pair of Green Cochoas (Cochoa viridis) which my father saw near the persimmon tree. In total we got almost 60 bird species in just half a day! That is what I count as 'good'.

The abundant Flavescent Bulbul visiting a broccoli-like fruiting tree