Malayan Night Heron Hatchlings

After about a week of rainy days, I went back to check the nest on 21-May. Surprisingly, I saw four hatchlings on the nest. I believe two hatched on mother's day (click HERE to view the hatched egg shells), and another two hatched after mother's day. 

The hatchlings look healthy and strong, they were aggressively competing with their siblings and begging for food from their parents. Both parents are very experience in parenting, they take turn to feed and care their chicks, they protect their vulnerable chicks by covering them with their body and wings after every feeding session.

 

Feeding session, so can you find all four hatchlings in the picture?

Will all these four chicks survive? let's wait patiently for the next update.

Happy Birding. Keep Watching, Keep Listening and Keep Exploring.

Malayan Night Herons hatched on Mother's Day

Found these two hatched egg shells of the Malayan Night Heron on Mother's Day. Glad to see these two new born lives arrived to this wonderful world, successfully.

Length is ~3.5cm, Width is ~3.5cm, 
the complete egg is approximated as 5x3.5cm.

 

Keep Watching, Keep Listening, and Keep Exploring.

Birding on the eve of Mother's Day

I had my birding trip to Sinhua area in Tainan on the eve of mother's day, together with three members of NCKU Bird Club. We started our journey at 4.30am and reached the destination at about 5am, it's dawn in the summer in Taiwan. 

I was lucky to have a chance to see my lifer, a Bamboo Partridge (Bambusicola thoracicus, 竹雞), it is an endemic sub-species of Taiwan. The call is loud and easily distinguished, as "kee-koo-koo" repeatedly.

Partridges are usually shy and hard to be found and digiscoped, unless you play "hide without seek" with the bird. Then, how did I locate it? It's partly due to luck and "bird-sense" as well. I patiently and calmly followed the source of the call from the higher ground as possible. Surprisingly, the bird was actually calling on a tree branch at the same ground level as me, at about 20m away, without missing the opportunity, I just shot it, digitally. 

Therefore, I would like to dedicate these partridge pictures to my mom. Happy Mother's Day!

(click on the picture to enlarge)

Here are the bonuses of the day:

Taiwan Scimitar Babbler (Pomatorhinus musicus, 小灣嘴), 
an endemic species of Taiwan.

Maroon Oriole, an endemic sub-species of Taiwan. 
The maroon colour is closely similar to the red colour of the 
Trogon in Malaysia.

White-bellied Green Pigeon

Happy Birding.