A Wander on the Wildside: Hornbills or House Sparrows?

Here I am, gutted to have missed the Twite Twitch today at Beddington, at home thinking of wildlife, hoping that something interesting is going to come and sit on my windowsill tomorrow morning in the horrible weather.

As most trips I've been on have been close to home, generally the birds I see are quite similar to what I see in my home country.

However, there are 2 exceptions.
One is India (2012-13) where I spent nearly a month visiting relatives in Kolkata in the North and then a short break to Kerala in the south. That was a great trip, and was the second year of my birding life, so I didn't know much., though we were fortunate enough to see some good birds.

The most incredible experience though was in the summer of 2015, where I spent 10 days on an island off Malaysia, called Pulau Langkawi.

I arguably had the time of my life, and over the 10 days managed to see c.80 species, since the island was largely inaccessible in such a short time.

I was fortunate to see some incredible birds. Since nearly every bird I saw was quite brilliant, I'll only name a few. The iconic Great Hornbill was seen on two occasions, as were the other Hornbill species. Black-throated Sunbirds, White-bellied Sea Eagles and numerous Kingfisher species were all seen from the incredible resort of Four Seasons. Other highlights included Crimson Sunbirds, Greater Flamebacks and the endemic Brown-winged Kingfisher, and I can't forget the Brahminy Kites (all which made me wish that such exotic birds were seen back in England!)

Not only was it the birds that made the visit so great. While at the resort and the island, I was shown the wildlife by naturalists and birders Aidi, Farook and Annuar. I still remember everything I saw so well, as although I'm unlikely to visit any time soon - unfortunately - they gave me great experiences, and found the Hornbills and many other species for me, as well as the Monitor Lizards which stalked the huts at times. Finally seeing a Racket-tailed Drongo after being unsuccessful in India was a relief.

The most important bird to me, supposedly, is my profile picture for Google, (probably the first decent bird picture I took,) of a Black-naped Oriole seen outside the resort.

If only some of these exotic birds were seen in England, along with the birds that I can never get enough of. I must have seen Grey Wagtail and Sparrowhawk and House Sparrow hundreds, if not thousands of times now, but everytime I see one I always feel quite content.

Among the usual words this week like 'revision' and 'yawn' one of the automatic words that come up now on my phone when typing on WhatsApp is 'Twite.' I'm glad to hear that David Campbell's organised twitch today was successful, and more people managed to see it. Before it heads off back to Derbyshire, I hope I can get a good sight of it.

Here are some of my favourite pictures from that trip.

Collared Kingfisher -
For a while, nobody knew what it was as the beak looked oddly flat, and it was causing confusion among birders, but then it was easily found to be a Collared Kingfisher. My sister had even prepared a number of names in case we had found a new species :) Nonetheless it was the first time that Aidi had heard of them fishing on the beach, so was quite pleasing for me.