Tanjung Tuan - Raptor Watch 2012

Raptor Watch @ Tanjung Tuan near Port Dickson are one of those events which are "compulsory" to attend among the serious birders here. This year i was fortunate enough to attend as March is always the busy month in my work schedule. Glad to see most of  the "sifus" are presence here, either manning the raptor counters or the event booth - even Dave was making his second consecutive appearance this year. I have been forewarned by my partner Mr CY Tan that this year's count was surprisingly less than last year and there were times that they could not see even a single raptor in two days !

The first bird we saw at the car park was this Collared Kingfisher.

At the entrance of the light house we saw a group of Javan Mynas - this fellow was one of them.

Then there were a pair of this noisy but friendly Asian Dollar Bird flying around the light house.

The first raptor seen was not a visitor but a resident raptor which was this Changeable Hawk Eagle - pale morph. At about 11.03am John Steed cried out: "one coming from the left" !! Yup- that was the first raptor crossing from the Straits of Malacca - a Grey-Faced Buzzard which was flapping its wings quickly as though as he was late for work. Unfortunately i was not able to get any good photos as it was blur and far away.

While waiting for the raptors to flyover, we saw this White-Bellied Sea Eagle perched nearby.

It was only about 11.30:09 am, came the first raptors flying in a group led by this Grey-Faced Buzzard.

Then four of them flew in silently and were thermaling nearby.

As there were no more raptors sighted after this short excitement, we left the light house venue at around 12.50pm. All in all before we left, there were 14 raptors sighted from the straits - all of them were unfortunately Grey-Faced Buzzard ! We went down straight to the event site to enjoy and share the carnival mood with other local and international birders.

Note: on the second day i.e. 11 March 2012, the counters have registered more than 5,000 raptors flying across from the straits. So it looks like their flight patterns were also determined by the weather conditions as during my earlier trip the sky was cloudy.