MAKASSAR, Indonesia — “Hi, This is Kamaruddin calling in, just parking my car.” “Great, go ahead and share your experience with this broadcast’s theme with the Natural Resources Conservation Agency.” “Thanks. So, I have a cockatoo and a hawk-eagle and I’m just learning they’re protected species. I bought them online and now if I want […]
Category: Wildlife
Arabian Green Bee-eater
The Arabian Green Bee-eater is usually treated as conspecific with M. viridissimus and M. orientalis, but differs from both in its very short stub-ended central tail feathers; bright blue forehead, supercilium and throat, and bluer lower belly; broader, smudgier black breast-bar; marginally larger size and clearly longer tail (minus the tail extensions) than the other […]
Peccary’s disappearance foreboding for other Mesoamerican wildlife
The white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), a hairy, pig-like mammal that once lived throughout the forests of Central and South America, now only skitters around in 13 percent of its former range, according to a report released in November 2018. More than two-thirds of white-lipped peccary populations are on the decline, said scientists who met to […]
Arabian Magpie
The taxonomic position of Arabian Magpie Pica asirensis is certainly uncertain, although it is generally regarded as a subspecies of Eurasian Magpie. Gill & Donsker (2016) regard it as such, though there is a caveat “MtDNA phylogeny suggests that Eurasian Magpie comprises several potential species including Korean Magpie P. sericea, Mahgreb Magpie P. mauritanica and […]
Saving the Helmeted Hornbill
Helmeted Hornbills Rhinoplax vigil are used to clashes. When a tall forest tree is in fruit, rival individuals launch into one of the most remarkable skirmishes seen among birds anywhere. The mighty hornbills, up to 1.5 m in length, take off from their high perches with deep beats of their enormous wings. Just above the […]
Great visit to Wallasea Island
Sometimes a days birding can deliver very little and then sometimes days like today come along where it all seems to go right. A Barn Owl as we pulled into the track to the reserve followed by two Short-eared Owls hunting at first light then a male Merlin flashes across us and sits out on […]
The long journey to saving the Sumatran rhino, via Borneo (commentary)
In 1982, an orangutan researcher working in Indonesian Borneo wrote to a colleague at the biology department at the National University in Jakarta. He told of meeting a traditional-medicine trader at the market in Pangkalan Bun, a city in Central Kalimantan province. “A whole Sumatran rhino head is immersed in coconut oil in a basin,” […]
The Animalscape
There is a kind of wildlife image that has always spoken to me deeply. If you have been following my photography for more than a month you would have noticed that I often share these kinds of images. I like to call it “The Animalscape”. The animal in the landscape. The landscape with the animal(s) […]
