2014 CNY BIRDING IN FRASER'S HILL

Last 31st January 2014 was the start of the Chinese New Year celebration and a public holiday for Malaysia and i took the opportunity to do some birding while taking my family for a five days holiday on Fraser's Hill. As expected the place was crowded with people celebrating the new year  with most hotels fully booked. There were also a few groups of local and foreign birders seen walking around with their branded binoculars, not surprisingly as Fraser's Hill is top on the list for recommended birding site with around 255 species recorded so far.

The weather was very sunny and warm which was a stark contrast to the one i experienced on the previous trip which recorded a low of 17 degree Celcius. A very warm weather plus a heavy crowd on a small hill made the birding very challenging and at times annoying. It was very difficult to get a shot of a bird when you have cars and motorbikes passed by every few minutes honking around each corner! Some birds are used to human presence but there some which are very shy and jumpy which made it difficult to be photographed.

In order to have some success i had to change tactics by going into areas which are away from the crowds. I did most of my birding along Hemmant Trail(700meters), Girdle Road which is a loop road about 2.5 km long lined with private and corporate bungalows far away from the town center, Mager Road and the area near Jeriau Waterfall. I did most of my birding on foot and i covered almost 10km by walking during my five days there. It was quiet tiring carrying a Manfrotto tripod with a gimbal head which by itself already weighs around 4 kg and a Canon 5D Mk3 coupled with Canon 400mm f5.6 lens plus a flash gun Nissin 622.

My previous photography of birds hardly used a flash gun as i wanted to keep the photo looking natural without the harsh flash exposure,but at times i ended up with under exposed shots which were noisy. The available light in a tropical forest is quite limited due to thick canopy and during overcast day there is no other choice but to use a flash no matter how good your camera ISO performance is. My Canon 5D Mk3 is considered one of the best cameras with great low light performance but when the lighting is bad i still get noisy images without flash. Now i am having a paradigm shift that is it is better to have a sharp shot using a flash than having an underexposed blurry image of birds which can make identification difficult.

My walk through the 700 meter long Hemmant Jungle Trail only produced the two shots below of a female Large Niltava and a Mountain Fulvetta. I took a shot of a Crimson breasted Oriole but the image was too soft and blurry to post here as my flash could not reach way up to the canopy where the bird was perching. That reminds me to get a flash beamer the next time i go birding. The jungle trail was challenging because there were a few fallen trees across the trail which forced me to go through the branches up and under. 

A female Large Niltava near a fallen tree along the Hemmant Trail

A Mountain Fulvetta shot along the Hemmant Trail

I never tried going birding along the Girdle Road before as i thought it was not passible the last time i drove there as the road was very narrow and there were signs of slope collapse posted along the road. Boy was i wrong, it was very enjoyable and peaceful to do birding along this road as the forest is still thick and pristine with a few bungalows scattered along the road and the most important thing of all is very few vehicles passed through this road. I shot a lone Mountain Imperial Pigeon resting just a few feet from the edge of the road without being scared of my flash, amazing!

A Mountain Imperial Pigeon shot along Girdle Road

At the same time i took these shots of the Imperial Pigeon another bird came to look for food a few meters away and it turned out to be a White-browed Shrike-Babbler as below:

White-browed Shrike-Babbler

I noticed the area along the Girdle Road has a large population of Drongo as i came across them almost at every corner and sometimes in a few bird waves mixed with Warblers, Laughing-thrush and Sibia. One thing about Drongo is that they are hard to photograph being dark blue black and perching deep in the forest makes the autofocus of the camera hunting to lock and the camera metering inaccurate. After a few tries i managed to take a few shots of the Drongo as below:

A Drongo taken along Girdle Road

I also saw a Lesser Yellow-nape Woodpecker looking for insect up and down the trunk of the trees near BNM bungalow, however my shot did not turn up so good. At a corner near the Green Acre bungalow a wave of sultan Tits came looking for insects in the trees along the road and i managed to shoot the photo below:

A Sultan Tit

The rest of the day was spent to look for a species which has eluded me the most - Trogons. I was told by another birder i met that day that the area along the Girdle Road had been visited by Trogons on various occasions, however i did not have much luck that day.

The Mager Road is the first road on the right when you first arrived on the Fraser's Hill and it will lead you to the Singapore Bungalow, Seri Barkat House, Seri Selangor Bungalow, Pulawan Training Centre, Pelangi Palace, Methodist and Richmond Bungalows.I like the area along the road as most of the time it is quiet. The trees along this road are tall with thick canopy so most of the time the lighting is not so good. That day i spotted the White-tail Robin, Silver-eared Mesia, Black-throated Sunbirds and as usual the Drongo. I had seen the Verdicter Flycatcher before in this area and a Partridge but this time none appeared. I am not sure which sub-species of Partridge that i had seen before as the photo taken was quiet poor as shown below:

A species of Partridge along Mager Road taken in previous visit

 The Jeriau Waterfall is located about 4 kilometers below Fraser's Hill. I went down there with a hope of finding the Trogons as one birder reported seeing a Red Trogon the day before. Well, after four hours there the only birds i managed to spot were the Bulbuls and a Blyth's Hawk-eagle high up in the sky, too high to shoot a photo of it.

The crowd had dwindled on Tuesday as most of them had gone home which made the birding along the main roads in Fraser's Hill bearable. There were fewer cars and less honking. So i decided to do birding by walking from my hotel the Shahzan Inn along the golf course up to the Paddock area, through the Lady Maxwell Road all the way to the Jelai Resort next to the Allan's Dam. The Jelai Resort had been abandoned by the owner and left to rot which is a pity because it was one of the main birding spots in Fraser's Hill not to mention the hotel rate was quite cheap. Gone were the days when you could see many birders lined up their tripods and long lenses to shoot the birds that visited the bird feed in front of the resort all day long. Below are the shots i took along the Lady Maxwell Road and the Jelai Resort for your viewing:

A Grey-chinned Minivet taken along Lady Maxwell Road

A Long-tailed Sibia taken at the Jelai Resort

A Striated Spiderhunter taken at the Jelai Resort

All in all it was not a bad birding i had during the Chinese New Year week but it could be better if i had shot a Trogon. Sometimes what we birders need is a bit more luck to get the shot of the species we want, maybe it will need a bit more of effort, a bit more searching, a bit more adventure, a few more trips here and there, a bit more knowledge and research, and information sharing among birders which what makes birding is so much fun.

Until next time, happy birding.