Hokkaido Winter Birds
Change of climate, anyone? Think of winter clothes, hats, gloves, boots, minus 10 degrees. Several of us went for a winter self-drive bird photography trip to Hokkaido in February 2011.
Change of climate, anyone? Think of winter clothes, hats, gloves, boots, minus 10 degrees. Several of us went for a winter self-drive bird photography trip to Hokkaido in February 2011.
The 2010/2011 migration season saw a sharp uptick of interest in the pelagic birds of the Singapore Strait, a few groups organized outings. I was lucky to go on several of these trips. On the 2nd of October 2010, we set off before dawn in the first of a series of outings organized by Colin Poole.
While photographing Baya Weavers Ploceus philippinus at a site near Lim Chu Kang in western Singapore during May 2008 certain unexpected observations were made regarding adult male behaviour at the nest.
On the first day of July, 2010, I was on Bunker Trail, when just before 8:00am I noticed a bird fly from tree to tree that gave me the overall impression of a large cuckoo. I was in the car at the time and so I drove to the forest edge and observed, the bird continued to move from branch to branch until to my great fortune it settled on a relatively open perch. It would stay on this perch for an incredible twenty minutes giving me plenty of time to observe it’s behaviour. One of the first things I noticed was the bird was making a very soft call, and then within a few minutes a female White-rumped Shama flew in. As soon as the female was there, the cuckoo started quivering it’s wings.
In mid-December 2009 I went to Heliconia Walk at Singapore Botanic Gardens to observe and photograph the sunbirds feeding on the heliconia flowers together with Jean René Croguennec. I had my camera focused on a particularly promising Heliconia psittacorum ‘Lady Di’ flower cluster. Not long after we arrived and to our astonishment, a male Olive-backed Sunbird flew into the flower I was targeting and began his mating display. Although I’d never witnessed this before it was unmistakable what he was doing.
