Things I saw when I moved at a slower pace...

I missed the bus a few times today, so I ended up walking to and from school today.  I had not done that in a while, and I missed the things I can come across with when I am moving at a slower pace.

Found these small egg shells on the trail.  The parent bird probably took them away from the nest.  I wonder what kind of bird laid these eggs.

Insects on dandelions & New birds of the season

I biked to school today to print off some documents.  Afterwards I went behind the office building to do some photography. 

Found two of these Ragweed Leaf Beetles (Zygogramma suturalis) scurrying away from me or playing dead.

Riverview Park and Zoo, Peterborough

One of the main attractions of Peterborough is probably Riverview Park and Zoo, operated by the Peterborough Utilities Group. It is quite an interesting place considering that it is completely free and actually has a fair number of animals to make it a good place to visit if you have a couple of hours to spend.

The first animal that I saw was a Monarch butterfly flying beside the playground. I didn't see a whole lot of them the limited number of days that I have been here.

The classic M on Monarch.

Update post, inc. trip to Dyer's Bay

Hi all. I am back at the cafe using wireless internet. This might be the only post for the upcoming weeks/month as the birds are arriving next week, and after that everyone will be very busy and has less time for non-work related things.

While driving to the cafe this morning, my colleague and I saw an Eastern Meadowlark and 3 Wild Turkeys - both of which are lifers for me. I will share them next time.

Now, the usual views and creatures from the Fox Den (where we are currently housed). Once again, please click on the photos for more descriptions about each image.

World exclusive: Muller's Barbet's eggs and embryo

I'm currently sitting in front of the laptop at home enjoying a rare Typhoon Day and listening to the rain platters on the metal window roof shelter. The entire island nation is facing the onslaught of Typhoon Morakot, and land and sea warnings are issued to keep people indoors. Time to sit down and wonder about my proximate and distant futures, I guess.

Yesterday (August 6) was also a hard-raining day where my co-workers working outside were completely drenched when they entered the office. Yikes. Thankfully, I was indoors all day yesterday.

My co-worker had been paying attention to a particular nest outside of TBG because he had not saw the barbet parents returning and incubating their three eggs. Two days had past and still no signs of parents coming back. It is very likely that the eggs are all dead now (especially with the rainy weather), so we decided to take action and saw off parts of the tree branch and bring the eggs out.

While it was raining hard out, they painstakingly took 80 minutes to saw off the nest opening piece by piece and finally took out the eggs.

When they brought them back into the office and we smell them, the eggs were indeed all bad. It is surprising to see the size of the small eggs (measured at about 3-cm long and 2-cm wide). While trying to preserving them, I accidentally cracked one of the eggs and yolk immediately flowed out.
Holding the cracked against the light, we saw a dark shape at the side of the egg. It was an embryo of a Muller's Barbet.
Holding a small dead embryo between my fingers brought strange feelings and thoughts to me. It made me realize how small and fragile these protective eggs are, as well as the life inside them. How unforeseen causes can decide death and life of anything and anyone, and how special a life is from a developing egg to a beautiful individual.

I do not know what other people's reactions are when holding such a precious thing in your hands, but it certainly made me value life even more, and that's the truth.
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Strange living places

Yesterday, a volunteer observer told me about a Black Drongo (Dicrurus macrocercus) nest at a metro station near where I live. So in the morning, I rode the train backwards one station to see it for myself. The nesting bird was indeed there, right across from the metro tracks. What a strange place to live.

Black Drongo (Dicrurus macrocercus) in the brooding stage. I love its tail!

Before arriving work early, I hang around the Lotus Pond in TBG and took some pretty nice photos.

Beautiful Water Lily

Black-crowned Night Heron fighting for bread crumbs that tourists are throwing to feed the fishes in the pond.

Common Moorhen had to join in on the action as well.

Afterwards, I headed back to office to start working on my paper report. Most of my morning consisted of analyzing and describing photos of nestling developments. During lunchtime, I came outside again to check out a new nest site that my co-workers have been monitoring for a while now. The nest site is located adjacent from the TBG, so it is not actually inside the garden. Nevertheless, the data will be worth having since this is a new nest tree with a new pair so that we can have a complete set of data of this particular nest.

While I was there, the male adult came close to the female and mounted her! What horny birds, according to my colleagues, because this pair has sex quite often.

Since I was just visiting I did not take part of the endoscopic observation. So I can finally photograph and show you how we do it.

The above photo is the nest entrance. As you can see, the nest is again inside a Camphor tree on a sidewalk of a busy street (second strange living places of the day). The below left photo shows one person handling the extended pole with the endoscopic equipments attached to it while another has a small screen attached to the camera and takes photographs of the latest nest status [the photograph showed 3 eggs already]. So why copulating again? The below right phot shows the camera (and LCD lights) extending into the nest cavity to record the status. Isn't it fun? This nest is relatively close to the ground so using the pole is enough. But imagine a nest at least 10 meters above the ground. That's when it gets dangerous and tricky.

Still the same...

TBG Attractions

I spent a part of the morning just walking around the botanical garden carrying equipements back and forth.

This is one of the Muller's Barbets that we were recording today. The below is the female adult, as identified by its whitish lower beak.

Muller's Barbet (Megalaima nuchalis)

From now on, one of my main tasks will be sorting and compiling literatures and writing my paper report; hence, my work will be taking place inside the office. Nevertheless, when I have the time and opportunity to go out to the botanical garden, I tried to enjoy every moment.

The beautiful male Black-naped Blue Monarch (Hypothymis azurea) standing on its nest with two new nestlings. This nest is becoming photographers' favorite subject to shot in the garden.

I still get arranged to observe barbets for three hours when we are short-handed, such as today. While watching for the parent barbets to come back and feed their nestlings (which was infrequent), a female Oriental Magpie Robin came just a few meters away from me.

Female Oriental Magpie Robin (Copsychus saularis)

As some of you may already know, the botanical garden is also quite abundant in the stray cats inhabiting this area. They are also quite a favorite attraction among common tourists because no one can deny their cuteness and beauty.

Mama cat and baby kitten

Taking a nice nap...

While heading back to the office, we came across a Malay Night Heron standing on a grass field (and later scared onto a tree by a cat).

Malay Night Heron (Gorsachius melanolophus)

Not much seems to have progressed during the weekend.
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Stag Beetle & Little Egret in TBG

Another tiring day today. I spent most of the day in the botanical garden observing barbets and trying to catch them. Fortunately, at the end of the day, our modified (several times) mist net trap finally worked and caught an adult!

Other than watching barbets, I still found time to find and photograph these cool creatures!

Dorcus titanus sika is a beetle of the family Lucanidae. This is one of the most common stag beetles in Taiwan, and the males are about 24 to 72-mm in length, while the females are 24 to 42-mm in length. This individual is quite small and is about 25-mm long only.

The observation station today was the same as yesterday. So I checked to see if the mushroom is still there or not. Surprisingly, it had changed! [I am still working on identifying it.]

Near where we were trying to catch the parent barbets, a Little Egret was trying to catch fishes.

Walking along the wooden columns and catching fish

Quite an elegant and graceful looking bird, no?

This is today's status on the caterpillar and the parasites.
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Photos of the Day: Day Three

I just had a group dinner with new friends from last week's orientation tour. Plus, today was extremely hot and stuffy in Taipei City, so it wasn't too pleasant working under the sun. Here're some of the interesting photos that I took.

The latest nest tree discovered and its owner. Inside the nest cavity are three eggs. Strangely, in the three hours that I observed, I only saw the male parent incubating the eggs. I wonder where the female went.

Near where we were observing the nest, a bright orange mushroom was found. I hope to have its identification soon because it's quite beautiful.

In addition to observing the nest, we continued with our barbet catching assignment. The first method of using a mist net with extendable poles on two sides never really worked out since the parent barbet never allowed enough time for us to make our move. So in the late afternoon, we changed our plan and used a smaller mist net hanging (on four corners) placed just outside the entrance - kind of like raising a flag. We will be trying this method again tomorrow.

While catching the birds, I tried to photograph a Chinese Bulbul's nest while the parents were away. But shortly afterwards, the parent returned and wasn't very happy with me being an intruder. So I quickly left them alone.

Back in the office, the parasitic eggs are entering into another life stage...So fast?
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Seeing an out-of-season White's Ground Thrush and Barbet catching lizard!?

Second day of internship started with a beautiful morning.

Before heading to the office, I walked around the Lotus Pond and took pictures of the blossoming water lilies.

Soon after, I saw a Malay Night Heron flying up on to a rooftop.

Gorsachius melanolophus

For the most part of the day, I spent time in the office looking over research papers on what to include in a fundamental biological paper regarding a specific species. Another task of the day was heading out to the botanical garden and try to capture and leg-band the adults of some nest sites.

Our method was to set up a mist net before the nest entrance of the barbets. This particular nest site has one fledgling in it, so the parents had to fly regularly to feed it. We allow the parent bird to enter the nest without harm. Once it had entered, we rushed to the bottom of the tree and hold up the poles (with the mist net). We caught an adult once, but the net was too loose and the bird bounced off after. So we made another net, but no success catch afterwards. Sigh. We will have to wait for tomorrow again.

Waiting for the adult barbets to arrive requires a lot of patience. Thankfully, a lot of interesting critters were found around us so we weren't bored at all.

A moth caterpillar belonging in the Family Psychidae with parasitic eggs laid on it. We suspect it's the work of a parasitic wasp. I brought the caterpillar back to the office and will observe it everyday from now on.

Another task was to follow through with yesterday's work and see if the third egg has been laid or not (only two eggs had been positively identfied yesterday). While moving things around to assist our work, we found a larvae of some kind of a beetle.

What a juicy looking thing. If I am a bird, I would definitely eat it!

One of the most interesting things of the day was seeing this White's Ground Thrush (Zoothera dauma). It is an interesting sighting since the species migrates and winters in Taiwan during winter only. To see this bird in the summer is definitely a surprise!

It was found underneath the canopy and the boarded pathways, so it was extremely difficult to photograph and get a good image. These were the best ones I have.

When returning back to see if the adult barbet had arrived for us to catch it, we received a major surprise and saw a Swinhoe's Japalura in the bill of the parent barbet!!! It was the first time that I (and my experienced co-worker) had witness Muller's Barbet feeding its offspring a lizard!


After feeding the fledgling inside with a large lizard, (another?) parent barbet came back and brought back a smaller japalura again this time!


What a day!
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Difficulty of observing nesting behaviour

We changed to a new observation spot today. The nest is located at the left branch where it was snapped off when mainteinance workers at the garden accidentally broke it. Thankfully, it didn't affect the nest cavity and the adult pair successfully reared one fledgling. Nevertheless, the physical changes done to the nest may render it a poor nest from now on; therefore, we are thinking off sawing it off (to examine it closely) if no pair is using it one month after the fledgling leaves the nest.

One difficult task of observing any new site is to differentiate adult A from adult B, and preferably know the correct gender of each. Sadly, after a few hours of looking at them (below photos), we were not able to point out any significent characteristics. Hence, the set-up of a triangle mist nest outside the nest (right photo above) to try and capture the adults and leg-band them.

Are they the same or different individuals?

We successfully caught one adult just a few minutes after setting the net up. We completed the measurements and leg-banding within an hour and released it soon afterwards. We then waited for more than four hours for the other adult to arrive. Strangely, that never happened. We will have to try again tomorrow. Maybe it is a single-parent family?

While waiting during the four-hour period, I saw two Malay Night Herons near us - probably because there was a nest with two fledglings just a few metres above us. When a stray cat passed by the adult, the adult heron raised its head feathers and became very fierce-looking.

My co-worker pointed out this hidden nest of Chinese Bulbul (Pycnonotus sinensis) for me to see and photograph (while the parents are away).

Beautiful orbs.

PS - When we checked the nest with the abandoned fledgling today, we saw a lifeless body. We were too late. Truthfully, rescuing it was quite challenging for us too since we were unsure how to get the baby bird from the nest chamber 25- to 30-cm deep from the nest entrance that is only about 5-cm in diameter. We are truly sorry and may you rest in peace, baby barbet.
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