Banded Pitta
This will be my Pitta no 5/7. After 6
weekends of staking or rather stalking this bird; it finally gave me one minute
window as it stood in the open. To say it is a easy bird to see is an
understatement and to photograph the bugger is damn near impossible if you
search it out. So wise up and wait for it to come to u. A hide is the only
solution as Prin says. This guy will run circles around you. It do response to
your call but never once come out to peep at me. Instead hop off and stay afar
20m in the opposite location and sometimes behind you. The Banded Pitta colors is just amazing and I used to be so envious of our fellow Thai birders getting beautiful photos of them in closeup. Some says the Banded Pitta is the most beautiful amongst all..... with its luminous myriad of colors - light and dark blues, orange, red, yellow, black, brown, white and gray all make their appearance in the male’s plumage. The hen, though more plain in color is no less attractive. It would be fanstatic to see the male wooing the lady but mating season is already gone.
Banded Pitta looks very much like a minute crane or heron with its legs set way back of its body. Although 10 inches in length, a stocky built and cocky stand makes it appear a good deal larger. It tends to hop rather than walk. Banded Pittas are entirely carnivorous. Other pittas do go for fruits & berries. In the wild, Banded subsist entirely upon snails, earthworms, beetles, spiders and other invertebrates, with perhaps some carrion takings when available.
Banded Pitta occupy a huge range, being found in moist lowland forests from Thailand south through Malaysia and Indonesia to the Greater Sunda Islands. They stay to the undergrowth and forest clearings usually near wild boar tracks and wet creeks, They forage almost entirely on the ground. Naturalist are now diffentiating the bird into 3 endemic subspecies ie Borneon,Thai-Peninsula Malaysia and the Indonesian basing on the head colors of the male (dull yellow to orangy-yellow and bright yellow)
September 2016
I finally get to shoot the female Banded Pitta in Bukit Rengit Here is my catch.
Beautiful shot Mike. Where you shot him ?
ReplyDelete