Retired Teacher

The brown shrike migrates between its breeding grounds in Siberia and its winter home ( September to April)  in Malaysia.  They are excellent navigators, often returning to the same location year after year.  In both their summer and winter homes these shrikes maintain territories.   Open forests including parks and gardens are preferred.   As a consequence of territoriality, late arrivals are pushed into less favourable habitat. Shrikes apparently originated in Africa in close association with thorn trees and have spread worldwide.  They are often called ‘butcher birds’ because, in the breeding season , the males will skewer both food and non-food items on thorn trees or (adapting to modernity) barbed wire fences.  It is thought the males need to prove their hunting prowess to females. Of note: Apparently some females are fooled if males display non-food items.   Other males will raid these larders, either because they are hungry or because they want to make the territorial male app

The Malay name,  Punai Gading,   can be translated as ivory green-pigeon.   This is a medium-sized bird, about 30 cm long and weighing about 150 grams.  Males are the same size as females, but more colourful.    However, both birds can be difficult to see in the tree canopy where they pass most of their time.  I often see spotted and zebra doves on the ground, but these green-pigeons only come down from the tree tops when they are thirsty or they need more grit for their gizzard.  As birds do not have teeth, mechanical digestion requires birds to swallow grit.  These small stones pass through the digestive tract and eventually would need to be replenished.  Note that, eventually could be a year or more ( US Dept of Agriculture BF Kaupp 1924 ).  Trees provide fruit for birds in the hope that their seeds will be dispersed.  Green-pigeons with grit in their gizzards could be considered to cheat the system.   Their gizzard is able to grind the seed into small pieces that can be chemically

  Bitterns have much shorter necks than other herons and, in the hand (not advised), have have 10 tail feathers whilst other herons have 12.  Bitterns have a reputation as being shy birds, but this is not entirely true.  T he IUCN-SCC Heron Specialist Group write somewhat snidely “this is not a well-understood heron, despite being relatively easy to observe”  ( HeronConservation » Cinnamon Bittern ).   One the one hand, is true that bitterns are generally difficult to find.   They have excellent cryptic camouflage and when alarmed rely on freezing with an upward pointed bill in a classic bitterning ‘I am one with the reeds’ posture (Dr Amar Singh ,   bitterning posture ).   Most species live in reed beds, are active at dusk and dawn, and hunt by stealth:   “ creeping almost cat-like in search of frogs”   ( Cinnamon bittern - Wikipedia ) although insects, snails, crustaceans, and fish are also taken. Is there a bittern in the photograph below?  Here is another "Where is the bit

 Makes 12 large rolls or 20 small rolls. If you want the videos Part 1: Making the dough   https://youtu.be/yK_0mvVsgzs Part 1: Forming the rolls and baking  https://youtu.be/tmHqgmllWUs First ingredients, in order Notes 45 ml cooking oil  Lam Soon’s Naturel Canola with omega 3 190 ml of whole milk (about 3/4 of a cup) Any long life carton milk will do. 90 ml of water (about 3/8 of a cup) Filtered tap water 3-5 ml of salt I use sea salt.  More salt (5 ml) gives more flavour but inhibits the yeast so I use less. 35 ml brown sugar I tend to use organic brown sugar. 25 ml of yeast LeSaffre yeast 50  grams  of rye flour Organic rye flour from Germany, sourced from HOI.  400  grams  of high gluten white flour I like the Singaporean unbleached bread flour from Prima

 This recipe makes 12 large rolls or 20 small rolls. If you only want the recipe follow this link https://retired-maths-teacher.blogspot.com/2021/02/nine-grain-bread-rolls-tldr-version.html If you want the videos Part 1: Making the dough   https://youtu.be/yK_0mvVsgzs Part 2: Forming the rolls and baking  https://youtu.be/tmHqgmllWUs First ingredients, in order Notes 45 ml cooking oil  Lam Soon’s Naturel Canola with omega 3 190 ml of whole milk (about 3/4 of a cup) Any long life carton milk will do. 90 ml of water (about 3/8 of a cup) Filtered tap water 3-5 ml of salt I use sea salt.  More salt (5 ml) gives more flavour but inhibits the yeast so I use less. 35 ml brown sugar I tend to use organic brown sugar. 25 ml of yeast LeSaffre yeast 50  grams  of rye flour Organic rye flour from

Introduction Black giant squirrels are widely distributed- from Nepal to Vietnam and as far south as Java.  About 10 subspecies are presently recognised.  With further study, it is likely some subspecies may be promoted to full species status.  In that case, our squirrel would be officially become the Malayan giant squirrel. Momentarily frozen: a serpent-eagle was flying just 2 -3 metres above the canopy. How is a giant squirrel different from an ordinary squirrel? Characteristic plantain squirrel black giant squirrel       Head & body length 15-22 cm 34–37 cm Tail length 21 cm 42 cm Weight 160-260 g 1.0 -1.5 kg Age 4 years in the wild. Up to 10 years in captivity. 6+ years in the wild. Up to 19 years in captivity. Description A medium sized squirrel, the tail often curls over t

The Changeable Hawk-Eagle is known in Malay as Helang Hindek which translates to foot leverage eagle.  The Malay name refers to this eagle's habit of sitting upright “at the outer end of a branch” [i.e., the lever arm] “…a bird of prey that wants a clear view of its surroundings.”  The quotations are both from sealang.net/malay/dictionary.htm ; search for hindek.   Is this a Foot-leverage Eagle? The English name ‘hawk-eagle’ also refers to this bird’s hunting style.  It is an eagle that hunts in dense or open forest in the manner of a goshawk.  The ‘changeable’ part of the English name is potentially misleading.  It does not mean a single bird can change its appearance in the manner of a bian lian or Chinese opera face changer ( Chinese Face Changing-theatrebeijing.com ).  Instead, ‘changeable’ refers to the extreme variability of this hawk-eagle which ranges across 13 million square km, from India to Philippines.  Although I have seen this species previously (in India) I did not