RAILBABBLER 1/1 - Malaysian Rail Babbler

It was a beautiful sighting here  in the month of May 2016. I was very envious of fellow birders getting this bird at one time.  I was tempted  to go down to Johor just  to shoot it  whenever fellow birders post their picture in facebook or blog. I never thought I get this chance to see this rarity up close and in the open near KL. So happy to chalk up another lifer for 2016.

In my previous encounters they sort of stayed in an area for quite sometime if the area can provide abundance of food and shelter. The wet season do brings out the birds here in Pahang.

This enigmatic bird is endemic to Malaysia and Thailand peninsula. I have encounter it before in Bukit Rengit but got no chance to shoot it the last time because of low light deep in the forest trail and my poor telephoto gear then. This bird can be sighted in Taman Negara Pahang, Panti forest Johor,  Bukit Rengit and Bukit Tinggi in Pahang.

It is a medium sized, fairly slender songbird, about in length, and weighing . It has a long thin neck, long black bill, long legs and a long tail. The plumage is mainly brown with a more rufous forehead, crown and throat. It has a long, black eyestripe extending from the bill to the side of the neck and a broad, white supercilium above it. There is a strip of bare, blue skin on the side of the neck which can be seen when the bird calls. Juvenile birds are similar to the adult but have duller head stripes, a whitish throat and greyer belly. It has a long, monotonous whistling call. When agitated, it gives a series of frog-like notes.

The Rail-babbler or Malaysian Rail-babbler (Eupetes macrocerus) is a strange, rail-like, brown and pied inhabitant of the floor of primary forest in the Malay Peninsula & southern Thailand.

 Its population has greatly decreased because much of the lowland primary forest has been cut, and secondary forests usually have too dense a bottom vegetation or do not offer enough shade to be favourable for the species. The species is poorly known and rarely seen, in no small part due to its shyness.

It is a shy and secretive bird, which lives on the forest floor. It walks like a rail, jerking its head in the manner of a chicken, and it prefers to run rather than fly when disturbed. It feeds mainly on insects, including cicadas, and beetles; spiders and worms. When feeding it will dash after prey items. Little is known about its breeding habits. The eggs are laid around first few months of the year and fledgling have been seen in June. The nest hes been described as being placed near the ground on a pile of dead leaves among the stalks of a plant around from the ground. It is made of plant fibres and is a cup shape. The clutch is two white unmarked eggs.
 

You can see the bellowing sag when it call ...............sometimes you can mistake it as the Garnet call and vice-versa.