Recent Penang Trip

Would have been a very disappointing trip, went to Ulu Paip to hunt the Blue Banded but no show after 2 days of waiting, fortunartely bag these 2 species.

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Thought this pair were Commorant from afar, but going near surprise to see these are Darters.

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Again thought this was a Black Winged Stilt but turn out to be White Headed instead.

Swee swee !!! Congrats ! [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

very POISONOUS darter shot..... seemed like the best for the pair that I had seen so far!!

Congrats!! Darters is the star bird of Dec 11'

better than nothing la!

BENCYF wrote:better than nothing la!

Better than nothing???? The Oriental Darter was not recorded in Peninsular Malaysia for probably more than 50 years and was considered extinct over here until 2 recent records a few years back in Perak and now in Penang (3rd recent record)!!!

The next one, I didnt read the caption earlier, stating that he tot it was the common Black-winged Stilt but found out it was a White-headed instead, which is a species that is not recorded in Peninsular Malaysia!!!! but was argued to appear in East Malaysia. I suggest you send in some rare bird record for the Stilt if there are more support of its ID but from what I knew, the ID of it in Borneo is still in strong dispute, your bird falls within one of the normal variations of the Black-winged Stilt. There are no clear light on the exact identification criteria that would effectively divide the two species in the overlapped region, information on separation is still fairly poor much due to the species originally conspecific and it is a common problem that subspecific identification is often of much poorer interest in the birding community and therefore not much of them would pay attention on it and such information would often be left out by some field guides. From the current data, the White-headed Stilt is not accepted by MNS-BCC yet in East Malaysia. Maybe your photo will give us some new platform to debate on.

So BEN, this is never close to "better than nothing la!".........

jytou wrote:very POISONOUS darter shot..... seemed like the best for the pair that I had seen so far!!

Agree with jytou. Really nice shots

jytou wrote:

BENCYF wrote:better than nothing la!

Better than nothing???? The Oriental Darter was not recorded in Peninsular Malaysia for probably more than 50 years and was considered extinct over here until 2 recent records a few years back in Perak and now in Penang (3rd recent record)!!!

The next one, I didnt read the caption earlier, stating that he tot it was the common Black-winged Stilt but found out it was a White-headed instead, which is a species that is not recorded in Peninsular Malaysia!!!! but was argued to appear in East Malaysia. I suggest you send in some rare bird record for the Stilt if there are more support of its ID but from what I knew, the ID of it in Borneo is still in strong dispute, your bird falls within one of the normal variations of the Black-winged Stilt. There are no clear light on the exact identification criteria that would effectively divide the two species in the overlapped region, information on separation is still fairly poor much due to the species originally conspecific and it is a common problem that subspecific identification is often of much poorer interest in the birding community and therefore not much of them would pay attention on it and such information would often be left out by some field guides. From the current data, the White-headed Stilt is not accepted by MNS-BCC yet in East Malaysia. Maybe your photo will give us some new platform to debate on.

So BEN, this is never close to "better than nothing la!"......... [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

wah! so rare ah ! better this weekend go to try my luck!

Congrats on getting these rare birds and nicely done too.
Don't know how to tell between usual black-winged and white-headed stilts though.

Ya lorr.... that darter or burung kosa already gazetted as pupus in semenanjung malaysia. Fellows birders from penang and northern area all rushing to batu kawan area to view this amazing species. Was at penang last week, but no time to hunt for this.... sigh.

jack2964 wrote:Congrats on getting these rare birds and nicely done too.
Don't know how to tell between usual black-winged and white-headed stilts though.

The general way now is that White-headed had Black nape to hind neck and the base of the black could form a half collar, black on the neck often sticking outwards compared to Black-winged, distributed across Java, Australia, NZ.

The Black-winged is of much of the rest of the world, but the one commonly found in Malaysia is usually with white head in full breeding males, but lots of intergades in between and individuals, the worst case is one with black crown to hindneck, part of the reason why White-headed could barely be told apart in range where they would co-exist as we cannot be sure if those are part of Black-winged variation or authentic White-headed.

Borneo had recently believed to be a zone where both would co-exist, being laying at the boundaries of distribution for both forms. In OBI, a Sulawesi photo which is placed under Black-winged looked like typical White-headed Stilts and from range probably are in fact White-headed, Penang is a little off the original believed range but they are still considered to be poorly studied in Malaysia, so we could still be surprised.

saif00582 wrote:Ya lorr.... that darter or burung kosa already gazetted as pupus in semenanjung malaysia. Fellows birders from penang and northern area all rushing to batu kawan area to view this amazing species. Was at penang last week, but no time to hunt for this.... sigh.

the most recent publication had upgrade them back to Vagrant after the discovery of it again in Kinta Nature Park, but that one didnt stay around like this two do!!!

Great news. Pls stay there. Hopefully can record this on my sensor next time....

Not bad at all lah, you got the rare bird here.which we also did not got it

Thanks guys for viewing, and I think I cause a controverse here, to further add to the comfusion here is a shot of most probably the Black Winged Stilt that looks like the White Headed..
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chrisli wrote:Thanks guys for viewing, and I think I cause a controvesial here, to further add to the comfusion here is a shot of most probably the Black Winged Stilt that looks like the White Headed..
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haha.... my point exactly, but your first bird still have good chance, we need see how other thinks, better submit for rare bird record, see if MNS BCC is convinced or not, erm, the second one is quite hard to say, the two species probably only can be positively identified in full adulthood. But at least yours is probably first case in Peninsular Malaysia for review?

Jytou, how do I do that... I mean submit to MNS

chrisli wrote:Jytou, how do I do that... I mean submit to MNS

Go to the link to download the form, fill in and send back to the email stated in the webpage:
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I found it last year 28-12-2010 at Byram..
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and this is JUV said by expert and photo take on 11 April 2010
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Happy birding

Hi Chris and all,

Some excellent photos there, well done! Thanks to Tou for pointing these out to me.

I'll tell you what I know about the stilts, which isn't much. There are several claims of White-headed Stilt from Sri Lanka, Borneo, the Philippines and Indochina. The taxon is known to occur only in Australasia and some of the Indonesian archipelago.

The problem is that White-headed Stilt is not known to be a migrant at all. In extensive ringing/banding studies, there has never been a bird caught which has shown additional fat, which migratory birds always store in advance of their migration. So these dark-naped seasonally occurring birds are unlikely to be genuine White-headed Stilts.

Furthermore, these dark-naped birds always seem to occur in South-east Asia during the northern winter, which suggests that they are migrants from a location to the north of us rather than the south. My own records show that I only see them from about Nov to Feb. The claimed White-headed Stilts in Sri Lanka also occur at this time. So, it seems clear that they are migrants, but we're not yet sure from where. It's likely that the dark nape is shown only by a small percentage of individuals rather than by entire populations or subpopulations.

In places where both forms regularly occur (parts of Indonesia), the best way to tell them apart in the field (apart from the nape) is the call. White-headed has a deeper, lower-pitched call than Black-winged. So any claim of White-headed in our region should ideally be accompanied by sound recording of the call.

I hope that helps. I am interested in records of dark-naped stilts in Malaysia, so would appreciate it if you can send me details of dates, numbers, etc.

Thanks

Dave

Hi BK,

You are up early! Do you have dates for these?

Thanks

Dave

digdeep1962 wrote:Hi BK,

You are up early! Do you have dates for these?

Thanks

Dave

You mean the second photo?

I shot mine on the 21/22 Dec this year.

bklim wrote:I found it last year 28-12-2010 at Byram..
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and this is JUV said by expert and photo take on 11 April 2010
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Happy birding

The one with dark all to the rear crown is a variation of the Black-winged Stilt, White-headed shall never had this feature.

Beautiful shot of the Darters. Well done!