Chestnut Ave 04-05Jan09

From Con

4 Jan

I went on a three hour walk this morning looking for the hooded pittas that Boon Leong Chong reported at Chestnut Ave near the reservior recently. No luck finding them, but I did find plenty of mountain bikers. The area is riddled with trails, most of which had lots of bikers on it, even though there were signs posting no bikes. It was actually fairly unpleasant walking and having to get out of the way of bikes every few minutes. I suppose only on weekdays is it nicer to walk.

I didn't see any ground birds, no thrushes, robins, no rare migrants, just the usual tailorbirds, sunbirds and flowerpeckers. The only thing that made the day interesting was an owl calling...

The owl called every 5 to 10 minutes for about 30 - 45 minutes starting around 11am. I tried to bash a bit closer and see the bird, but still have no bins (in for service). Never did see the bird, and whenever it called my iPhone was always off, so I couldn't record it's call.

But I played all the owl calls I have stored on my iPhone and the one it sounds closest to, very, very close in fact, is the Barred Eagle Owl. The owl is definitely not (by it's call) a Buffy, nor a Spotted Wood, nor a Collared Scops, nor Brown Hawk, all of which I've seen / heard enough times to be reasonably familiar with. Of course I could be wrong ... :-)

5 Jan

I got to Chestnut Ave around 8:30am, and started walking in. It's about 1.5km, and I was carrying a lot of gear. Attached are 4 waypoints and a map. On the way in I heard Abbott's Babbler, first time hearing them in Singapore. I also flushed a suspected Siberian Blue Robin off the trail. It was quite nice early in the morning, no bikes all day.

I got within range and started hearing the owl around 9 am, below is a table with the timing of his calls. Around 9:30 or so I started to bash in and finally located the exact tree around 10:15, just in time for a few last calls before he stopped calling at 10:30. I heard no more calls until 11:30, so I left.

I managed to get a partial recording, attached, but it is quite faint. The later part of the recording you can heard SAF helicopters, there was quite a lot of noise pollution from SAF all morning.

Bashing into the tree and out was quite difficult, although only about 200 meters distance, it took 30 minutes each way. The forest floor was covered with leaf litter up to 2 feet deep in places, and the was a lot of rattan with thorny spikes. Growing up in Illinois we had a lot of snow that was 2 feet deep, but not forest floor this deep. A bit scary what might be hiding in the leaf litter. Once you reach the tree, there is a small stand of 3 or 4 very mature trees and the forest floor is more nearly like primary forest, the ground is almost bare. The owl is up 30 or 40 meters, a couple of photos of the tree are attached.

I found a fresh feather at the base of the tree which is dull brown and six inches from tip to tip. I still don't have any bins, so it is really tough for me to see what is up in the tree so high.

Walking out I came across a beautiful blue, black and red snake that was stretched across the trail over 1 meter in length in full view, head to tail. It was motionless, so I backed up quite a ways put my pack down and got out my camera, but the shortest focal length I had was 300 mm. When I went back to the snake it was sliding off into the forest so I just got a few poor images of it's back and tail. I missed the head. I see from Nick Baker's site it is the Blue Malayan Coral Snake which is highly venomous.

Timing of Calls
9:05
9:13
9:20
9:34
9:41
9:44
9:45
10:00
10:13
10:19
10:24
10:30 recorded partial call
11:30 left tree no calls
12:00 reached trail no calls