Malay Peninsula 2023
Here are some of the birds Ethan found while birding in Southern Thailand and Peninsular Malaysia.
Ethan saw lots of nesting Asian Broadbills, both old and new, during his “expedition.” In fact he managed to record all of them that live in the area. To see the last three he will need to go to the Philippines and of course Africa for Grauer’s Broadbill.
Clockwise from top left: Black-And-Yellow Broadbill, Silver-Breasted Broadbill, Black-And-Red Broadbill, and the Long-Tailed Broadbill.
In addition to getting all of the possible Asian Broadbills, Ethan saw this Green Broadbill which is in the African Broadbill family.
Nyctyornis Bee-Eaters are majestic, sexy, beasts of the air. Ethan is tired of people disrespecting Bee-Eaters. They are all haters and are just jealous.
On the left is the Blue-Bearded Bee-Eater and on the right is the Red-Bearded Bee-Eater.
A rarely seen Mountain Peacock-Pheasant from Bukit Tinggi, responsible for the vast majority of sightings.
Two more Phasianids with fewer than 1000 Ebird reports. A Ferruginous partridge on the left and a Malayan Partridge on the right.
Ethan would have wanted to see a few more Hornbills but at least he got to see his old acquaintance the Oriental Pied Hornbill (left) doing a cool trick and finally met some Great Hornbills (right).
Ethan was able to avenge some of the defeats he suffered in India with decent photos of a Silver-Eared Mesia (left) and White-Tailed Robin (right).
Gould’s Frogmouths. Ethan’s favorite Frogmouths yet and his first double including a sweet baby. John Gould was apparently a big fan of hummingbirds, even sailing to the United States just to see a live one in Philadelphia, so good on him for getting his own personal Frogmouth species. He also has the Dot-eared Coquette (Lophornis gouldii) that he would probably be even more excited about.
A Sunda Scimitar-Babbler (left) and Malayan Banded Pitta (right), two fairly elusive ground birds that look pretty cool if they cooperate.
On the left is a Blue-Crowned Hanging-Parrot offensively caricaturing Italians and on the right a slightly disheveled Red-Headed Trogon.
On the left a Rufous-winged Philentoma lives up to its cool name and on the right a Yellow-Vented Flowerpecker fails to enjoy a fruit. Interestingly, Ethan saw several Yellow-Vented Flowerpeckers making this exact same mistake throughout his trip.
Ethan spent several minutes slowing crawling on his stomach over sharp sticks and rocks to get closer to this Brown-Winged Kingfisher only to eventually realize that it was seemingly unafraid of humans and would have allowed him to just walk up and take a picture.
Two smaller kingfishers, the Dwarf Black-Backed Kingfisher on the left and Malaysian Banded-Blue Kingfish on the right, who Ethan had to overcome low light levels and being in a small, moving boat respectively, in order to photograph.
Of course Ethan saw an abundance of Bulbuls. Here are some of the best ordered from left to right by how cool their name is: Gray-Bellied Bulbul, Ochraceous Bulbul, Flavescent Bulbul.
A couple of sort of neat birds. On the left a Whiskered Treeswift and on the right a Long-Tailed Sibia.
Now it is time for the owls. Here is a Mountain Scop-Owl (left) and Brown Wood-Owl (right).
This is a sweet looking Brown Fish-Owl with big, meaty, powerful, succulent toes.
The bird Ethan was most happy about getting was undoubtably this Oriental Bay-Owl. It was his first Tytonid Owl (he hadn’t even seen a Common Barn Owl) and it looked a lot less disheveled than some of the pictures Ethan had seen. Also look at those feet.