Sweet Bird in the Backyard

I spotted, actually T spotted, a bird making a nest in the small Mango Tree at the back of the house. Everyday T has been glued to the window closest to the tree watching the activity.

I did a quick search online, but couldn't find a photograph of this smallish white bird with a black almond shape around her eyes. Anyone know what kind of bird this is?

Common Myna Birds and Grass

One of our regular visitors in the yard are birds known as the Common Myna which often lurk around the yard pecking the grass and sometimes they sit on the roof and in the Bamboo and Mango Trees. I like their call which is pretty. I looked them up a long time ago and found that they are considered an invasive bird. One of only three birds in the world to be considered invasive because they inhabit an environment and then take over in numbers and they are somehow aggressive. I think this is possibly true because the Common Myna birds in Malaysia, or at least in my yard, are very strong and they seem to always be plotting for food. Our cat T loves to watch them but given the opportunity, I don't think he would attack them as the Common Myna birds might first attack him!

So our Cow Grass after the last mow is looking like this. And in some places you can see the dirt. It seems like the grass is getting very thin. And we had the thought after seeing a bunch of birds pecking in the yard that maybe they were having something to do with the grass thinning.

We sent some photos to Nilai Landscaping, the company that put the grass in and said we were concerned the grass was dying. This is what they wrote back:

It will not die off just like that, don’t worry.

Dead grass visible underneath is actually the “thatch layer” (please google for the meaning). Could be avoided with constant cutting (2 -3 cut per month) and sweeping off the grass clippings after cutting.

Grass that looks like it is growing vertically in certain areas instead of normal horizontal growth is due to lack of sunlight (insufficient sunlight).

Grass colour is too light green and it should be darker green. This is due to insufficient fertilizer.

Trusting the above is in order.

So we will now fertilize and try and mow the grass more often and see what happens.

Malaysia Common Kingfisher Bird

I was walking past the big windows in the second floor family room today and I saw a blue bird flying away from our property over to the treed area outside the neighborhood. I saw blue wings and body. It was a lovely bird I wish I would have been able to see the front of it to better classify it. Looking on Malaysia Bird websites like this I think that the bird I saw might have been a Common Kingfisher. I'll have to look out for the bird again. I'd really like to get a bird feeder to put up over by the large mango tree and the bamboo bush, because the birds like to hang out in this area, but I haven't seen a bird feeder for sale here or any seed!!!!!

Image from wiki commons of a Kingfisher Bird, wish I could have photographed the bird I saw

Two Strange Birds

I snapped a photo of these two birds hanging around outside our office window. The top bird was tapping on the tree, and so I wonder if they are in the woodpecker family. Anyone know what kind of birds these are? I should look up Malaysian woodpeckers to check.

Update- I think I found out what kind of birds these are... they look just like the Rufous Woodpecker seen here http://www.birdforum.net/opus/Rufous_Woodpecker.

Little Spider Hunter Bird

A few days ago I was standing under the carpark at the front of the house when I noticed a very curious bird with a long curved beak fly over to one of the pink Bunga Kantan Flower (Torch Ginger Flower) buds by the house. When in flight, the bird seemed like it was a large Hummingbird, but after it took its place on the bud, I thought it was too big to be a Hummingbird. The bird was pecking his beak inside the holes of the bud in a fast motion. He saw me and continued pecking. I thought he might be trying to get the nectar inside the bud. After a long time I spoke to him and he looked at me and continued not bothered by me at all. Afterwards I searched online and found the bird which is a Little Spider Hunter (photo above from here: http://besgroup.talfrynature.com/2009/12/23/tongue-of-the-little-spiderhunter/ ). A few of the photos showed the Little Spider Hunter near Bunga Kantan Flower buds, so I know it is the same bird. It seems they do like to get the nectar out of the plant.

Malaysian Oriole

We were up in our second floor Home Office eating lunch when we heard a loud bird making a pretty song outside our window. We peaked outside and saw an Oriole (from the Oriolidae family) in the tree. Quite a large yellow bird. We went to the Malaysia Birds website and found an image of the yellow bird. The photo here is from Wikipedia.

I didn’t know that for Orioles there are ‘Old World’ and ‘New World’ families. They have the new world type in the US and the old world type in Malaysia, so when I saw the large bird we saw today being called an Oriole, it didn’t look like an oriole I am used to seeing in the US.