After a short breakfast with noodles and a cup of kopi O' Ping, we went into the forest park. Pretty nice environment, one of the cleanest forest I have ever since in 20 years in West Malaysia. Here, we found Blue-banded Kingfisher, Velvet-fronted Nuthatch, White-bellied Erpornis, Striped Tit-babbler, Bamboo Woodpecker, Rufous Woodpecker, and many others but it's good to get an opportunity to see a White-crowned Forktail and Chestnut-naped Forktail . However, the only other lifer we got from this forest is a Rufous-chested Flycatcher. We left this forest before mid day and continue to the other side of the forest where we also made a quick stop. Found Grey-bellied Bulbul, Yellow-eared Spiderhunter, Orange-bellied Flowerpecker and Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker.
Next stop, we had a late lunch at my usual place in Bukit Tinggi. Darn it! It rained before we could continue our birding. Anyway, we drove slowly towards the city hoping that the rain clouds will be gone soon. Fortunately, the rain stopped. We walked into a forest trail and saw a few birds, nothing new until we got 3 Grey-headed Babbler nearby. With a little patience, we finally nailed this species after searching in several places on our previous trips. We returned to KL with 3 new species.
On another day trip, we went up to the highland after hearing about the flowering and seeding of bamboos along the major road uphill. We arrived early in the morning and upon getting out from the car, we had at least 3 Pin-tailed Parrotfinch right above the car! This species is usually seen when bamboo is flowering / seeding. We quickly drove to higher altitude. Need more lifers! Not too far into the trail, we waited for a bird wave and found new species in the form of Speckled Piculet and Marbled Wren-babbler. Heard the Pygmy Blue Flycatcher but could not locate it. Next, we nailed down a Collared Owlet, not really a new species but this time we had the frontal view. After lunch, the weather does not seem to allow us to do any more birding here so we drove down to where we got the parrotfinch this morning. But it rained heavily so we decided to call it a day! Another 3.5 new species.
