Fireback Pheasant
Another restless bird in the Southeast Asian aviary.
Another restless bird in the Southeast Asian aviary.
Cassowaries are native to Indonesia, I think. They have big feet, whose toes are dangerous because they can eviscerate you if you approach them the tactlessly. The casque on the top of the head grows during the bird’s life and indicates age. Portrait below:
There are about fifty of these in an enclosure at the Bird Park, very colorful. I think they’re African rather than Asian, but they look great nonetheless.
There are plenty of Nicobar pigeons, bleeding heart pigeons and others in the Southeast Asian aviary. What you can’t tell from this picture is that the shorter feathers on this guy’s back are irridescent. The pigeons wander around the central area at will, rather than being confined to cages – I guess nobody’s tempted to […]
This magpie is native to Borneo. Hard to photograph, although not particularly shy, because it moves around a lot. So catching it at a standstill was a minor triumph. So was photographing it before my camera steamed up from the ambient humidity in the Southeast Asian Aviary. This aviary features a pond and a daily […]
You’re not seeing things – his face really is bright blue. This is an asian version of a grouse, in mating plumage. I went back a few weeks later and his face wasn’t as brightly colored. The speckles are beautiful, too, but may be hard for you to see – this guy liked to lurk […]
Are these birds beautiful, or what? Highly sociable, too – there are about 35 of them in the exhibit, and all of them have all their feathers – a less punishing hierarchy than among chickens, I guess.
Back to the Bird Park. I’m proud of this picture because it’s one of the few I managed to take that really focuses on the detail of the bird’s features. I like the scratches on the bill and the single eyelash going off to the left – yes, these birds have eyelashes. African hornbills are […]
May seems to be the season for large tree-borne fruits to ripen. The university is built on land that was once a durian orchard, so in a few parts of campus you can see very large spiky durians hanging perilously high. Old inhabitants of the neighborhood will start to congregate underneath these trees in early […]
Ok, here is the elevated walkway a couple of kilometers from Mt. Faber, in the Forest Walk section of the interconnected trails. It’s over a kilometer long and descends gently down a hill that’s largely covered in secondary rainforest growth. That is, if you start at the top of Mt. Faber. If you start at […]