New Road, 9/10/16

After a good night's sleep and a fine breakfast at Stephen's Place, Stephen generously offered to drive me into Fasier's Hill and the start of the New Road.  For years there was only the single one lane one way Gap Road up the side of the mountain to Fraser's Hill.  The direction for up and down would change at different times of the day.  In an attempt to make the community more tourist friendly, they built a second road.  So the one way Gap Road is the "up" road and the New Road is the "down" road.  And this New Road goes through some pretty nice habitat which varies at different elevations.

So I started walking down the New Road with Stephen agreeing to pick me up later at 3 PM.  I had not gotten far before I found this Bar-winged Flycatcher-Shrike.

And then this cool Yellow-bellied Warbler.  I didn't ID it till I got back to the lodge.  Photography really makes birding in new environment a lot easier.  But it also makes us a lot less disciplined in our observation and note taking skills.

Sometimes even a photo doesn't help.  This is some kind of a babbler but I don't know which.

And this is one of the Blue Flycatchers.  I called it Hill Blue Flycatcher but I may be wrong.

I had seen Dark-necked Tailorbird previously in Borneo.

And then I head heavy wing beats and weird squawks.  A flock of Wreathed Hornbills flew over.

Raptors were proving hard to come by so I was happy to see this big Black Eagle.

And this juvenile Blythe's Hawk-Eagle.

More little guys included this Verditer Flycatcher.

And lots of Mountain Fulvettas.

Streak-throated Bulbul was another one I had to look up later.

A young barbet had to go unidentified.

I knew this one was a Brown Barbet when I saw it but now the Malaysian species has been changed to Sooty Barbet.  The one I had seen before in Borneo remains Brown Barbet.  So this one proved to be a new species for me.

I was getting tired and it was getting hot when Stephen picked me up at 3PM near the bottom of the road.  As we drove back up the Gap Road, we got behind a tourist from Kualalumpur who was driving exteremly slowly.  Stephen explained that  because they are used to driving on straight flat roads, they get terrified when driving the steep winding one way road up the mountain.