Amazing Pittas of Kuala Lumpur

Pittas are small short-tailed, multi-coloured ground-dwelling birds and a visual treat to encounter. General information on the pittas can be found here.

In this region, Alfred Russell Wallace (1869) used the distribution of pittas in nearby Sumatra to discuss problems in palaeobiogeography, noting the discovery on the small rocky island of Banca of "two new ground thrushes of the genus Pitta, closely allied to, but quite distinct from, two other species inhabiting both Sumatra and Borneo, and which did not perceptibly differ in these large and widely separated islands. This is just as if the Isle of Man possessed a peculiar species of thrush and blackbird, distinct from the birds which are common to England and Ireland." The Malay Archipelago, Chapter 9.

In and around Kuala Lumpur there are three species of pitta to be found; the mangrove pitta, blue-winged pitta and the hooded pitta.

I had met the mangrove pitta (Pitta megarhyncha) this June on Pulau Indah, near the port of Klang. Here below is a photo showing the bird hunting for small invertebrates in the coastal mud. Larger crabs watched on as it foraged. The Mangrove Pitta is listed as Near Threatened on The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species due to pressure on their coastal mangrove forest habitat and also poaching.


Mangrove pitta on Pulau Indah.


Yesterday, 30th December, on the last outing to search for wild things in 2017, I met the blue-winged and hooded pittas. Each has a territory in different parts of Taman Botani Negara Shah Alam. Even when the territory of one of these is known, much patience is needed to be able to observe the bird. After a couple of hours of watching, with only a lively pair of dark-necked tailorbirds and a pair of olive-winged bulbuls to distract, a blue-winged pitta (Pitta moluccensis) finally emerged. It's a very similar bird to the mangrove pitta, but with a much smaller beak (compare the photograph below with the mangrove pitta above).



This is a blue-winged pitta at the Taman Botani Negara Shah Alam. It's very similar in appearance to the mangrove pitta, but has a shorter beak.



In another part of the park we spent some time watching for a different species, the hooded pitta (Pitta sordida). Again patience was required. After some time, we noticed that we were being watched from the undergrowth, a pair of dark beady eyes, brown cap, a plump green body, blue streaks on the wings and a red belly, all balanced on two twig-like legs.



This hooded pitta, also at the Taman Botani Negara Shah Alam, watched us from the undergrowth. 


Here it is out in the open.



and again, a beautiful creature.





A GoogleEarth view of Kuala Lumpur showing the locations of Taman Botani Negara Shah Alam, Pulau Indah and KLCC (where civets can be observed at night).



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stone axes from the highlands of Papua New Guinea

Image
The story of first contact in 1933 with the peoples of the central Wahgi Valley in the Papuan highlands is a remarkable one. An unsuspected group of thriving stone-age cultures came to the attention of the outside world when the Leahy brothers first flew over the area and later reached it on foot. Tribal men carried elaborate stone axes and this contact with extant stone-age cultures provided fascinating insights on how their stone tools, such as axes and adzes were hafted. The available evidence was collated in Burton's (1984) Thesis at the Australia National University, on "AXE MAKERS OF THE WAHGI: Pre-colonial industrialists of the Papua New Guinea highlands." I saw a number of these old axes during a visit to the highlands near Mount Hagen in October 2018 (see the Paiya chief photograph below). The area of that journey is shown in the google Earth image shown below. The upper Wahgi River valley with locations of Paiya Village, Mount Giluwe and Mount Hagen t...
Read more

A Merovingian Croix Ancrée Tremissis, Sutton Hoo, and Declining Gold Content in the 7th Century Coinage

Image
In the recent Netflix film "The Dig" there is a scene in which Basil Brown's character shows a small gold coin, known as a tremissis, to Edith Pretty, confirming that the ship burial at Sutton Hoo is of Anglo Saxon age as he had previously suspected. A Merovingian tremissis found in Kent, 10 mm across 37 such coins, all from Merovingian Francia, were found at Sutton Hoo, associated with the remains of an elaborate purse. These coins have commanded a great deal of attention as a potential means to constrain the date of the burial. This is a highly imprecise process (the coins are not datable to within a range shorter than 16 years), relying on recognising issues associated with known rulers, identifying the youngest of these, speculating from there as to how much younger the undated coins may be, and then how much later the assembled group was deposited in the ship burial. The absence of locally minted coins in the group (the earliest were the East Anglian "trophy...
Read more

Horseshoe Crabs Past and Present: a NW Borneo Journey

Image
Horseshoe crabs figured strongly in my week. Last Saturday (April 1st 2017), I spoke with Kevin Laurie, a Hong Kong-based expert on horseshoe crab behaviour and conservation. He mentioned the existence of a wall decorated with horseshoe crabs in Kampung Ayer, the water village of Bandar, Brunei, in northwest Borneo. Armed with this tip, I visited Kampung Ayer on the evening of the following Thursday (April 6th), guided by two very knowledgeable locals, Wann and Mark Putera Delima. Kampung Ayer is an interesting place in itself, with Antonio Pigafetta describing the place as he found it when the surviving Victoria and Trinidad of Ferdinand Magellan's fleet visited in July 1521 (shortly after Magellan's death in the Philippines). His description of "Burne" was as follows: " that city is entirely built in salt water, except the houses of the king and certain chiefs. It contains twenty-five thousand hearths. The houses are all constructed of wood and built up fr...
Read more