April 20, 2013
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Hornbills, Bees and Owls
An interesting visitor came by the house on the 18th April 2013 early in the morning. More commonly associated with Sarawak, a hornbill, was seen near the house.
My dad was doing some work in front of the house when he heard some loud squawking nearby. I heard it too, it woke me up. The squawking sounded very mechanical, I thought it the noise of machinery from a nearby construction site.. so I went back to sleep not thinking much about it (you can’t think very much when you’ve just woke up anyway). Then my dad knocked my door and asked me to get the camera.
He pointed me to the trees where this big bird was perching. It was obvious from the tail and beak that it was a hornbill.
The species we’re all more familiar with is the great hornbill from Sarawak, with it’s massive yellow beak and horn of which its name came from. Most urban folks think hornbills are only found in Sarawak, but this is untrue. The first hornbills I’ve seen in Peninsula Malaysia are in Pangkor, small enough to fit into coconuts to nest.
Our customer this time is a female black hornbill. it has pinkish patches near its beak with the “hornbill” more hump like than a horn. Still big and decent sized, long tail with a white tip. Beautiful thing. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a good shot as the sun wasn’t fully up, had to overexpose or get it too shadowy which didn’t work too well.
Black hornbill perched on the big tree in front of my house
Another interesting character which came by today was a blue nee, more specifically a neon cuckoo bee. Did you know there were blue bees?? I certainly didn’t until I took this picture.
Fafa curiously checking out the beeI only realised what it was when I reviewed the pictures, thinking it was a beetle. Evidently.. if I knew it was a bee I wouldn’t have let my cats play with it. But apparently this species doesn’t have a stinger, so phew.
Definitely something you don’t see everyday. Now for something you don’t see every night – an owl!
I was working with my dad near the kitchen on an outdoor table we were making. In the dark along the forest floor within the house compound, I saw a pair of bat-like wings flapping on the ground and off again. I had a closer look thinking it was a bat, but noticed a bird-like figure on the fence. I didn’t know what it was but I instinctively knew it was an owl. I ran up to grab the camera.
Taking a night shot with my Olympus Pen proved to be quite a challenge as I was not familiar with its manual aperture settings. So I got my dad to shine a torch light on its side and got the shot above. We tried to re-position the torch, but it ended up scaring it as owls don’t like light. Nevertheless, we got a nice shot.
A very small owl! I think it’s a baby clops owl, based on the online birds database I use. You can compare its size with the fencing, which openings can just nicely fit the palm of an adult humans hands through. This is the second owl I seen since moving in, the first one in February, was much bigger.. about 40cm in height. Hopefully I can see more in the nights to come as we can hear them hooting away every night, just that the jungle is too dense and dark to see anything.
