Maxwell Hill or Bukit Larut Birding
When: July 2017 Weather: Cool 25C
Leica Q and Nikon P900
I jumped at the chance to visit a place I’d never been before just over an hour away from Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia…..Maxwell Hill or Bukit Larut(Tin Hill) on the outskirts of the town of Taiping. Many a post has been written about the birds of Maxwell Hill which has a height of about 1050m and a peak a few hundred meters higher….
Maxwell Hill is one of those places where the Malaysian Government has taken over the running and access …the only way to get up to the 1050m height where all the bungalows and rest houses are is to take the ‘official’ Land Rovers up the 10km road…..unfortunately, there are only 4 scheduled trips up and down….830am, 1030am, 1230 and 230 pm with commensurate descending times. ….Arriving there at 8am, we found that the 830am was full and there were not enough seats on the 1030… which basically left us with the only option of hiking up as high as we could go in 3 -4 hours we had….not a great start but sometimes we can see more walking…or so we hoped…
The entrance to Fraser’s Hill or Bukit Larut
the road uphill was steep in places with majestic trees towering…
the greenery was lush
and the views over the mountains were excellent…
The birding however, was challenging as there were loads of people walking up and down the hill making noise either with their portable radios, talking loudly or rhythmically clapping their hands together as they walked……
we saw this whiskered tree swift from a long way off…..
a lovely pair of zebra doves
in the distance again, this blue throated bee eater flew about catching its breakfast…with two pointed elongated feathers in the tail
Here, a picture of the chestnut headed bee eater taken in Ipoh which typically lacks the two elongated tail feathers seen in other bee eaters…
poor shot of a blue winged leaf bird
at Hut number 3, some gentlemen were brewing tea from the stream and kindly offered us some….we carried on walking after that till we got to just beyond a hut called the watermelon stand at about 4km distance and 400m altitude…..
Here, amidst a flurry of activity I only got a glimpse of a yellow body….
it was a black crested bulbul…blurred picture courtesy of roger yeoh
the trees were magnificent
and as we descended, this busy little dark necked tailorbird kept us company
last bird of the morning…..the purple naped sunbird or now known as purple naped spiderhunter..juvenile…thanks to KC for ID
farewell to maxwell hill…not a great birding morning but still an interesting outing neverthelesss…
And after getting down about 3.5 hours after we headed up, we drove about 10km to Kuala Sepatang, a seaside fishing village where we had a most delicious seafood lunch for very little money and lots of company from the Brahminy kites….
Brahminy Kite
a few pacific swallows were also in attendance
The Natural Traveller 