Chinese Garden, Sime Forest 04Nov06

From KH

Knowing that the ruddy KF was gone, we (Danny, JS, Soo Yen & his ex-teacher, I) went to Chinese Garden hoping to see the black bittern and Malaysian hawk cuckoo. However, we saw none of them but we did get these birds of note:

- many yellow bitterns
- 1 juvenile purple heron
- 1 crested serpent eagle heard
- 1 black kite soaring
- 2 common, 3 black-capped, 1 stork-billed KF
- 1 pied imperial pigeon (and 4 when travelling from JE MRT to CG)
- 1 tiger shrike
- 2 ashy minivet in flight
- tree behind toilet with AP & AB flycatchers, pied fantails, common ioras, OB & PT sunbirds, SB flowerpeckers, common tailorbirds
- many Arctic warblers
- 1 Oriental magpie robin

Also present were Alan Owyong, Alfred Chia and a number of photographers. By late morning, only Danny and I were left. We explored the old Tang for an hour or so. Just as we were complaining there were no birds in it, a brownish cuckoo-like bird was flushed. Con arrived with his friend soon after we were packing up at the carpark.

In the afternoon, JS was back with us and we went to Rifle Range. A bird wave greeted us when we were a short distance into the rifle range trail. Present were bulbuls (OW, CV), flycatchers (AP, AB), striped tit-babblers and ob sunbird. Further down at different places, a pair of very quiet malkohas were in the treetop, a banded woodpecker landed, 2 short-tailed babblers were calling away (pi-pi-pi-pi...). The BBKF was nowhere to be found but instead we flushed out a black bittern as we stepped on to the SICC boardwalk from the Jelutong end. It was funny that we searched so hard for the bird at CG but got it here instead. Moving on, a brown-chested jungle flycatcher was spotted and an emerald dove flushed. A long-tailed macaque demonstrated how to catch a cicada with bare hands! Also, sun skinks were common here.