Tapan Road

A later start today and it was kind of nice actually!  We drove about 2 hours to the Tapan Road and I kid you not, this is one of the best birding roads in Asia as it traverses an altitudinal range from around 1200m to 400m. And there’s a lot of birds to find here! Despite arriving at 10am and it being rather hot and sunny we knocked off 2 endemic bulbuls very quickly with Cream-striped and Spot-necked Bulbuls – and they are quite good looking actually.

Cream-striped Bulbul

Spot-necked Bulbul

The endemic Sumatran Treepie was also relatively abundant, and Sumatran Trogon was seen numerous times.

Sumatran Treepie

Down by a small stream on the slope below us thee were a few Black Laughingthrushes bathing and a Maroon Woodpecker flew in to join them.

Green-billed Malkoha

So the pattern of birding here is to simply keep on walking downhill and we decided to just see whatever was on offer and get a feel for the place. We’d leave the skulkers until tomorrow. And we racked up a nice little list of birds here. Barred and Little Cuckoo-doves were common, as was Green-billed Malkoha, and we also saw Greater Yellownape, a flock of Silver-breasted Broadbills, Ashy (Sunda) Drongo, Black-and-crimson Oriole, Hill Prinia, Eastern Crowned Warbler, Temminck’s Sunbird, and both Orange-bellied and Fire-breasted Flowerpeckers. 

Hill Prinia