Flight Shot of Whiskered Tern

I just finished processing some flight shots which I photographed at Byram last month. The series of shots were captured with the canon 1 D mk IV and EF 800 IS lens. I set the focus to manual focus and pre-focus at the rotten tree branch. Secondly, I set the camera to shutter priority and set it at 1/1600 so that it is fast enough to freeze the flying subject. I also dialed the ISO to 800 in order to use a smaller aperture of F10. The smaller aperture created a wider depth of field to ensure greater sharpness of the subject. Here are the flight shots :

 Approaching the Landing Spot

Thanks for viewing.

Mr Green, again.

For the past two weekend, I went to explore the low land forest of Sungai Sedim. My partners and I decided to hike further in than our regular place hoping to find some new species of birds. It required extra efforts as we walked up and down on the hilly track carrying 7 kg of gears.

The sunlights shone through the dense tropical forest (captured using Iphone)

Halfway through the hiking, we heard the call of the Green Broadbill and immediately went searching for it. It is very difficult to spot for this little green "gem" of the forest as the green color feather made it a perfect camouflage among the dense forest vegetation. We decided to play the "call" and hoped that Mr Green flew around. It is much easily to spot a moving objects in the dense vegetation. 

Finally we spotted it. Perching high up.

The last time I spotted the Green Broadbill was 4 months ago. I saw a male and female. However on this latest encounter, we saw total of 3 birds and one looked like a juvenile. If our observation is true, we are glad that the population has growth.

As we walked further into the trail, we spotted this pair of Orange-backed woodies. 

Male Orange-backed woodies

We decided to rest at a area where there is a stream running parallel beside the trail. As we were relaxing, we saw the Blue Banded Kingfisher, a shy and rare forest Kingfisher,  flew up stream into the forest. It was too fast for us to photograph. 5 minutes later, we saw it flew down stream again. The same pattern repeated several times while we were unwind here. After half an hour of resting, we decided to head back home. Perhaps the next trip, we will spend more time here to search for the Blue Banded Kingfisher.

A Day Trip to Ulu Langat

On the 23rd of April, I decided to take a day off from my work and went to Ulu Langat for a one day birding trip. The main purpose of the trip was to photograph the nesting and feeding activities of the Rufous Back Kingfisher at the lowland forest of Ulu Langat. According to the information from the local photographers, the nesting activities was toward the end of the cycle, the chicks will vacate the nest by this weekend. In order not to miss this rare opportunity, I decided to fly to KL on the first flight and return to Penang on the last flight of the day. The airfare itself was not cheap, it almost burnt a hole on my wallet, but I had no choice else I will miss the rare opportunity.

The adult Rufous Back Kingfishers were busy

feeding the chicks. The main source of food was

insects, frog, and lizards

The interval of each feeding was about 45 to 60 minutes. While waiting for the adult Rufous Back Kingfisher returning to the nest, I had the opportunity to photograph the Banded Kingfisher and Horsfield Babbler.

Banded Kingfisher 

Horsfield Babbler

It was a very satisfied trip to Ulu Langat. I was glad that I made the decision to visit here. I successfully added another 3 species to my lifer list. Oh not to forget, I would like to thank Mr No Good who came to airport to fetch me and bought me to the shooting location.

Your comments are most welcome.

My Thailand Trip - Final Part

I spent the last day of the Thailand trip birding at the the Army University and also the paddy fields outskirt of bangkok city. Among the highlights are:

Black Collared Starling

(Army University)

1 D mk IV EF 800 IS

Vinous-breasted Starling

(Army University)

Female Stonechat

It was memorable and fun trip. Throughout the 6 days trip, I successfully photograph over 50 species of birds and among the many species, there are over 40 species are lifers. You can see my entire collection of bird of Thailand at my pbase website ((Birds of Thailand). I would like to thank my bird guide Mr Parnuwat Sasirat for his excellent service and hospitality. I would not hesitate to refer friends who wish to do bird watching in Thailand to engage service with Wildbird Eco. 

A group photo with Mr Par