Panti Forest Bunker Trail Bird Checklist 2015

Panti Forest near Kota Tinggi in Johor, Malaysia, is a popular birdwatching destination for people living in Malaysia, Singapore and also for worldwide birders.

Reasons for its popularity include close proximity to large population centres in Johor and Singapore; and it’s ease of access with a gravel track that can be driven on in an ordinary sedan car in all months of the year.  Panti Forest is loaded with Sundaic region lowland tropical rainforest birds, and so is a rich destination that offers a very different experience from birding in an urban environment or any other part of the world, and so should be on every birder’s list.  Having many colorful birds including trogons, broadbills, kingfishers, woodpeckers and some pittas, it is a visual treat and very popular with photographers .  And especially for international birders, it is the relatively common presence of the Rail-Babbler which has earned Panti Forest the reputation as the best and easiest place to see this sought after species.

And so I was very interested when Mr Yong Ding Li¹ published his checklist of birds of Panti Forest back in 2006 and I used that for many years as the basis for keeping track of the birds I’ve seen.  Fast forward to the present, and many years have passed and many birding trips to Panti have been made, and so I thought it time to attempt to put together a more current checklist supported by sighting data over the past 10 years.

A group of us, Danny Lau, Lau Jia Sheng, Tan Kok Hui and I regularly visit Panti, and I’ve also made many independent trips.  Tan Kok Hui and Lau Jia Sheng have been quite rigorous in keeping track of what we’ve seen and entering this data in Bird I*Witness², and Kok Hui’s blog³.  Bird I* Witness is in the process of being merged with eBird⁴, but this hasn’t happened yet, and to me it felt like there was some urgency in retrieving this data from Bird I*Witness before (possibly) it might be gone.

So looking at over 10 years of data and over 100 checklists from TKH and LJS, augmented by my notes from many more independent trips the checklist presented below should give a fairly accurate estimate of the chances of being able to record any given bird on a trip.  With “record” meaning either seeing or hearing it.  Some birds are very difficult to see, so hearing might be the only option.

The checklist is presented in the same taxonomic order as the Peninsular Malaysia Checklist⁵, maintained by the Malaysian Nature Society.  I also used the same frequency of occurrence rank from 1 to 7 as used by the Malaysian Nature Society.  I did modify the “rank” description to reflect the percentage chance of seeing any given species.  With 1 being one sighting or less per year, and 7 being abundant with an 80% or greater chance of seeing or hearing a particular bird.

Panti Forest is fairly large at 10,879 hectares and consequently has a few access points and many fringe areas with a variety of habitat.  However, the main access point used by likely well over 90% of the visitors is Bunker Trail, simply because of the ease of access (gravel road) and relatively good forest cover.  However, there is a power line and consequently open scrubby terrain at the entrance, and at the end of Bunker Trail there is a disused sand quarry with another larger area of disturbed scrubland.

These two areas of scrubland attract a completely different set of bird species than in the largely closed canopy rainforest of the larger portion of Bunker Trail.  Visitors from Singapore and Malaysia likely are not too interested in these scrubland species as they are easily seen elsewhere, but overseas visitors may have more interest.  So with this in mind the checklist includes both forest species and scrubland species.  I did limit the scope of this checklist to birds seen on Bunker Trail to reflect a more relevant view of what to expect.

As of the date of compilation of this checklist, July 2015, I have included 270 species.  Quite likely I have missed several or even many birds that are seen less than once a year, either because no one I know has reported a sighting or there is no data.  Some birds are just very seldom seen in Panti, for instance, the Storm’s Stork gets seen perhaps once every 5 years.  Fully 50 birds on this checklist are seen less than once per year.  With enough observers and a long enough time, almost anything could turn up and probably does!  I suppose a case could be made to identify these as Vagrants to Panti rather than Residents, but I stayed with the Malaysian Nature Society definition of resident/migrant/vagrant status.

The total Resident (non-migratory) population of birds reported in this checklist is 231 species.  Perhaps more relevant to visiting birders are those species which are seen at least twice a year or more, as these birds would make up the bulk of what you might expect to see.  This subset includes 196 resident species.

Regarding the 39 Migratory species reported in this checklist, they are likely a bit under represented, because during migratory season we spend less time in Panti Forest, and more time chasing migrants in Singapore.  Still the major migrants should be captured.

REFERENCES:

¹Yong Ding Li:  Preliminary List of Larger Vertebrates in the Panti Forest Reserve, South Johore (2002-2006)

²RSPB/BirdLife:  Bird I*Witness (Malaysia)

³Tan Kok Hui:  Our birding trips

⁴Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society: eBird

⁵MNS-BCC Records Committee:  Peninsular Malaysia Checklist

Tags: birds, Malaysia, Panti