Japanese Garden 30Sep09

From GC

Saw a white morph Asian Paradise-flycatcher yesterday 300909 at the entrance of Jap Gardens. I found it interesting that this bird will dive into the water to get wet and then fly back to a branch to preen.

Also an Asian Brown Flycatcher was seen in the gardens, and a Common Kingfisher.

I've observed this juvenile Plaintive Cuckoo for 3 sessions, each time in the late morning, for about 1.5hrs. It looks for prey from a perch about 2m high and always procures its food (caterpillars) from the grass on the ground. When it sees something, it would usually tilt its head to one side and use the lower eye to have a good look before flying to the ground. Thereafter, it would fly to a perch too shake the caterpillar vigorously before swallowing it whole. The shaking is so fast we don't see what is happening. We may see a droplet of liquid at one end of the caterpillar, though. The body juices of the caterpillar are probably unpalatable, causing the cuckoo to squeeze them out and shake them off.

We can also see the zygodactyl feet of the cuckoo, a feature more often associated with woodpeckers.