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Published: August 3rd 2006
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baby gecko at Taman Pertanian
because it was raining on and off, the gecko was actually the only thing I took photos of this day Today was my first real birding foray into a semi-wild area, a place called Taman Pertanian, which means "Agricultural Park" which meant I was kind of expecting open country but the bit I was in turned out to be forest instead (which was better). It is on the outskirts of Shah Alam, west of KL. You can get there by either bus or taxi, so being tight I went for the bus. Of course the bus didn't leave from the Puduraya bus station right opposite my backpackers, it left from the Klang bus station. I got directions from the guy at the backpackers and set off. Having walked way too far along the first street (the tourist street map makes everything look deceptively far) I backtracked, found the next street and walked way too far along that one, backtracked again, and finally found the station (on the next street over from where I'd been told it was) and worked out I needed bus number 338. It cost me 2.50 Ringgits. Because of the meandering way buses do their routes, the trip took about an hour. It would have been much less time in a taxi, but it would have cost a fortune and it wouldn't have given me the tiki tour of the suburbs of Shah Alam (or knowing the KL taxi drivers, it probably would have!). Birds along the way were few and predictable (common mynahs, house crows, etc) but there were also quite a few magpie-robins and a white-throated kingfisher. The bus dropped me off, and there was a 15 or 20 minute walk to the entrance. They don't seem to be big on physical bus stops in this part of Shah Alam, apparently you just stand by the side of the road and flag it down. I wasn't too sure how well that would work for me when I'd finished for the day, but luckily when I got back to where I'd been dropped off there was a girl waiting by the roadside so I just went and waited by her till the bus came.
Taman Pertanian cost 3 Ringgits to enter. There was a map but, as should be obvious by now, maps simply make me MORE confused than my standard state of being. The roads around the park all had names but these names weren't on the map so I never knew where I was. Bicycles were there for rent at 3 Ringgits, but it was hilly so I figured I'd have spent most of my time pushing it uphill, so I just started walking along one of the roads into the forest (it was actually an arboretum apparently, but it looked genuine to me). In the end, I was there for five hours and I never really got very far, distance-wise. The first animals I saw were a troop of dusky leaf monkeys leaping through the trees (with the greatest of ease). I don't know if they're hunted there but I saw quite a few monkeys and all of them were really skittish (shooting licences are available, but I'm not sure of what's allowed to be shot). At first I couldn't find any birds. I could hear them all around me, and I knew they had to be interesting because their calls sounded like whipcracks and machine guns and things off a synthesizer keyboard, but the forest was just getting in my way. I had seen only an olive-winged bulbul and a crimson-winged woodpecker so far when I became distracted by water-filled truck treadmarks in the mud. There were little weeny flourescent-like tadpoles, a little stripy frog, a black-and-yellow bee-striped water beetle, various dragonflies (the most common being a small one that was entirely deep crimson apart for the black wing-tips), dragonfly larvae, and water scorpions. If you don't know what a water scorpion is go to Google and check it out. They're flat with a long whippy stingy-looking thing out the rear end and a pair of massive garden shears sticking out the front. The biggest one I found was about two inches long. I just wanted to catch everything there and take them home. Having spent about an hour poking round in puddles, I thought I better go try and get some birds, so off I went... and found a miniscule egg about half the size of my little fingernail in a bark crevice on a tree. While I was examining it, it broke open and a tiny baby gecko fell out into my hand! Its tail was flattened so I thought it may have been a flying gecko, except it didn't have any flanges (I thought maybe they might come in later, but later consulting books I'm pretty sure it was actually a flat-tailed gecko Cosymbotus platurus). I put it on the tree and hoped it would be alright.
Finally, I found some birds, and all of them were new for me. First some blue-winged leafbirds, then a bit further along the road I found what must have been the most perfect patch of trees in the whole forest, because I saw first a couple of malkohas (related to cuckoos; really awesome birds). Checking my book, they could have been either black-bellied or chestnut-bellied malkohas, so I reviewed their appearance and determined they were black-bellied. They were my first malkohas, so any species would have been good. Then, in the same tree, another pair: Raffles' malkoha! These were even better than the black-bellied. The male was out in the open feeding on berries. They had the most amazing calls. If you can imagine a cat on helium, with the sound sped up several times, that's kind of like the noise they were making. There was another crimson-winged woodpecker in there too, and a whole group of another species that I couldn't pin down for ages because they were just zipping in and out of the trees like crazy, but eventually checked off as buff-necked woodpeckers (once I'd determined what they were, after about half an hour, they spent lots of time in full view just because they knew it would be annoying). Then a malkoha flew from the trees the other malkohas were in and landed in a tree on the opposite side of the road. I checked it out through my binoculars, thinking it was one of the black-bellieds, but the beak wasn't right, then it turned around and I saw the chestnut front -- a chestnut-breasted malkoha. There are only six species of malkoha in the areas I'll be travelling in, and I just saw three of them in the same group of trees at the same time. As you can probably tell, I was pretty excited! Also a grey-bellied squirrel came visiting while all the bird action was happening, and that was a new species for me too. After that I also saw a cream-vented bulbul, a big horned beetle that made a flying visit, and a big green katydid. On the way back to the park's entrance way (it took me about 20 minutes walk; that's how far I got into the place what with the puddles and all) I came across another group of buff-necked woodpeckers (I guess they always travel that way), another pair of chestnut-breasted malkohas, more leafbirds, and a bunch of other little birds I couldn't get fixes on. People more versed in the ways of Asian birding would certainly have got dozens of more species than me, but I was very happy with my seven new birds (and the other stuff).
ANIMAL OF THE DAY: the malkohas, particularly the Raffles' malkoha because it was the most attractive I think, spent the most time in the open, and made cool noises.
Item of interest: on the highways outside of KL there are toll gates. Separating the lanes are pillars with the words "Say no to porn". Yet there doesn't seem to be a lane for those who want to say yes to porn...
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