New Road, 9/13/16

Originally my plan had been to spend at least a day on the old Gap Road but after having driven it with Stephen, I decided I would be better off walking the New Road again.  And once again Stephen was kind enough to drive me to the start of the New Road.  Sometimes the best part of birding is not the birds but other aspects of nature.  During my previous walk of the New Road I had heard the distant calls of Siamangs, the large black gibbons native to the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia.  This time I head them again but much closer and danged if a family group wasn't right by the road.

That's not a tail hanging down on this big male.  Siamangs are apes and therefore tailess.  No, it's just a big hairy scrotum.  I wish I had recorded the calls as they are impressive as with most gibbons.

Wow!  OK, back to birds.  The Siamangs eat a lot of fruit and there were plenty of fruit eating birds about also.  This is a Yellow-vented Green Pigeon.  There are some amazing pigeons in SE Asia but they are sure hard to photograph.

My only Red-throated Barbet of the trip.

Another Little Cuckoo-Dove.

The Chestnut-backed Scimitar-Babbler is an insect eater.  This is the third scimitar-babbler I've seen and all were hard to photograph.  Gee, they're just plain hard to see.

Two really good woodpeckers, Crimson-winged and Banded Woodpeckers, resulted in two poor photos.

The mother of all rolly polly bugs, this millipede was about an inch in diameter.  What a lovely color!

A Blyth's Hawk-Eagle acted like he owned the place.  This was a different one from the other day.

The White-bellied Yuhina is now the White-bellied Erpornis.

And then I got another on my most wanted list, the Great Hornbill.  Hornbills are the Old World counterpart of the New World toucans.  Both are large frugivorous birds with a large, light weight bill.  I only saw one but I'll take it.

The Wreathed Hornbills also put in a distant appearance.

White-rumped Shama is a common but shy bird in SE Asia.  They are great singers and are at peril due to the captive bird industry.  Bird singing contests can pay a lot of money.

Another barbet, Gold-whiskered Barbet.

Turned out to be my best day of the trip with 48 species.