Some new record shots

Had a new bird for my patch today:

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took me 9 months to be able to pinpoint the ID......


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and this shama flew and perched on the trail (staircase to climb the hill), and later flew further in and perched.

Are the Brown Backed Needletail is rare ?

nelson khor wrote:Are the Brown Backed Needletail is rare ?

nope..... Brown-backed Needletails are the commonest among the 3 species of Hirundapus needletails in Malaysia with the Silver-backed said to be uncommon and White-throated rare (or actually less abundant). However, swifts are greatly dismissed by a good population of birders because they are often hard to ID as they could be far up and so on. In Ipoh, I had not managed to find that the needletail is listed in the list of some localities around Ipoh or gardens of birders yet, I start to find them flying around since 1st Jan this year but you need to get good views of throat color to ID it to species level, so it is quite a valuable sighting for me as I finally managed to pinpoint the ID after 9 months of trying. These at my home are migrants, the resident race is even larger and I had seen 1 in Liman Kati, Perak but too far and fast for good pics as well, they are well reputed for being one of the fastest flying birds in the world!!!

I had a special interesting in IDying swifts and had managed to ID at least 6 species in my garden, namely the Germain's and Glossy Swiftlets, House, Fork-tailed and Asian Palm Swifts as well as this new edition Brown-backed Needletail. I had also potential sightings of Himalayan and Mossy-nest Swiftlets here but both species often need to be studied on hand to be certain (the later one wasnt even in the Peninsular Malaysian list officially yet!), the other 2 needletails are also potential to be seen all over P. Malaysia during passage months as they are pretty regular passage migrants, but White-throated is the most less and quite hard to see and is considered a RED ALERT here.

To ID needletails, they are bigger than the average swifts, large, they flap less and at good sun, you can see that there is a diagnostic white vent in all 3, the hardest is to see their throat color, totally brownish greyish in Brown-backed, totally white (contrast cut to breast) in White-throated and Silver-backed intermediate, with mixtures of white and brown. Many of the birders I knew are barely even interested with any swifts......

This is a challenge for photographers..these species seldom perch...

Mr No Good wrote:This is a challenge for photographers..these species seldom perch...

yalo..... I think they probably never perch except nesting...... that happens to a number of air borne birds.....

ehh how come you can tell it is brown-backed needletail while looking at the photo, I don't have any idea at all! how big is that burung layang-layang besar? bigger than the common pacific swallows?

bercham so many birds.

wahoo wrote:ehh how come you can tell it is brown-backed needletail while looking at the photo, I don't have any idea at all! how big is that burung layang-layang besar? bigger than the common pacific swallows?

much bigger, about 21cm, its the biggest among the swifts and swallows there, but the Rufous-bellied Swallow there that is bigger than the rest are of similar size and could fool you from far. I saw the throat when it was much much lower, then it flew higher and higher when I am busy setting burst mode, and chasing it, it fly very fast!!!!!! The photo just serve as a record shot, the first one that I managed to get the white on the vent to proof that ya, I do had needletails in my garden, my last shot is a black smudge which only show the silhouette earlier this year.....

BENCYF wrote:bercham so many birds.

not as many as Gunung Rapat, probably Gunung Lang also may have more, Tambun also a pretty good place......