Good morning traveling birders...Here is a morning story to you to wake you up :) One of the MEGAs of our 75 days Southeast Asia trip! Here it comes the Rail-Babbler(Eupetes macrocerus) from Taman Negara national park, Malaysia.(March, 2014) In the list of top 100 hard birds to get in the world according to some! The Rail-babbler or Malaysian Rail-babbler (Eupetes macrocerus) is a strange, rail-like, brown and pied inhabitant of the floor of primary forest in the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra (the nominate subspecies macrocerus), as well as Borneo (ssp. borneensis), distantly related to African crow-like birds. Its population has greatly decreased because much of the lowland primary forest has been cut, and secondary forests usually have too dense a bottom vegetation or do not offer enough shade to be favourable for the species. However, it is locally still common in logged forest or on hill-forest on slopes, and probably not in immediate danger of extinction. The species is poorly known and rarely seen, in no small part due to its shyness. It is a medium sized, fairly slender songbird, about 28–30 cm. It is a shy and secretive bird, which lives on the forest floor. It walks like a rail, jerking its head in the manner of a chicken, and it prefers to run rather than fly when disturbed. It feeds mainly on insects, including cicadas, and beetles; spiders and worms. When feeding it will dash after prey items. I found this one in Taman Negara, with its oldest rainforest in the world reputation, with a lucky moment of hearing its song. My friends were quiet tired and really didnt seem to convinced that song belongs to rail-babbler. I said that i will go inside to forest to check it. After 50 meters inside that thick forest i heard something was approaching behind the bushes. Actually i heard a call like a chicken-like grup gup gup call. Even thought of a monitor lizard in first seconds. :) You wont believe how i felt after got this shot... After bird walked away, i flew back to the path, accidently cut my legs with huge spike thorns, start to shout when realised they were not there... and you must see the faces of my birding friends when i showed this photo to them :) It never showed up again...
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 07:14:54 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015