Sunny day after the rain

Today's rain was drenching and horrible. Surprisingly, it turned sunny late morning. I guess it's typical monsoon season in the Tropics.

Before I arrived at work, a Malayan Night Heron flew towards me. As you can see, it was drenched (and probably hungry) after last night's downpour and started hunting for meals right in front of me.

When we headed to the nest site where barbet fledglings should be taking flight soon, I saw this beautiful Common Kingfisher. Sadly, it was too far away for me to take a decent photo.

When we arrived at the site, we "found" two fledglings on the ground and on low branches! What luck (because we were contemplating about the methods to capture them)! We picked them up without any troubles and brought them to the lab to take measurements and samples and leg-banded them.

Shortly afterwards, we released back into their nest. And within a few minutes, a parent called and the fledglings took flight again. We spent some time observing them and watching the interactions between the parents and their children.

Here's one of the fledglings with a blue leg band. Since they are just learning how to fly, they needed a lot of practice and encouragements (and food) from their parents. It might be two or three days before they complete master the art of flight, and then they will be on their own afterwards. Best of luck!

While observing the barbets, a Malayan Night Heron was saw again. It caught a nice juicy fat toad this time. We saw it watching the toad in the pond - perhaps to get wash away of the poisons.

While about to leave work at night, a co-worker showed me his recent catches of Chinese Tree Toads (Hyla chinensis). Aren't they beautiful? I placed them on a houseplant and took pictures of them on a artificial natural setting.

Common Chinese Toad
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