New Year 2022 - Rainy Day for Birds and Us

A Grey-breasted Spiderhunter (Arachnotera modesta) showed up that drizzly Saturday afternoon and made my day! I like how eBird describes its calls as squeaky and compared it to the sound of wet shoes squeaking on a smooth surface HERE. It is categorized as being of least concern by Birdlife International HERE.The first snap taken when this spiderhunter species perched on this tree fern branch. Something magical about tropical rainforest tree.

View of the hill forest with Genting Highlands just further up this road

Just watching the mist covering the forest is so soul-soothing. 

More soul-soothing views of the hill forest.

The Siamang did not show up this Saturday afternoon which could be due to the heavy rains. It was a very misty afternoon and birds were few and far between. Bird sightings entered in my checklist for eBird Malaysia, can be viewed HERE.  

Literally focused on this Grey-breasted Spiderhunter that afternoon as it was "friendly" enough to perch on this tree fern vine for quite a long time. There was a wild banana tree nearby and it was feeding on the flower of this banana tree.

 I think that is the Spiderhunter's long sticky tongue pictured above. 

Back view of the Spiderhunter. It is challenging trying to focus my Panasonic Lumix camera on this sunbird species. Sunbirds, spiderhunters and flowerpeckers are such fast flying little winged creatures. 

 A Ganoderma fungi the size of which is as big as my right foot - spelt the end for this tree trunk. This fungi is the nightmare of oil palm plantation owners and managers. 

A wild banana tree - one of several that was growing from the edge of the forest.

There's something magical about the hill forest  in this area. This trunk road from Batang Kali to Genting Highlands is one less traveled since the fastest (and more well-known) way to reach Genting Highlands is via the KL-Karak highway. Nevertheless, I am extremely glad to have re-discovered this lesser known trunk road which led to the discovery of the organic farm. It is of crucial importance to safeguard this sub-montane forest area since the larger tracts within the Genting Highlands vicinity are under the management of Genting Group which will require prior permission and entrance fee to be paid. More importantly, the heavy rains that caused severe floods in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, notably Shah Alam, Klang, Hulu Langat, Dengkil, Sepang were a reminder of the climate change impact on all of us. The floodwaters took more than four days to recede from the housing areas, with some families literally surviving on bread and instant noodles for several days. The Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) were the first to respond. The company which I worked for, a government agency under the Ministry, reached out to help the flood victims in Dengkil, Selangor. I volunteered together with a big team, to help clean a house which had been under 4 feet of floodwaters. The houseowner is the owner of a micro business selling local snacks in the area. It was after this volunteer work that I had managed to squeeze in some time to visit this organic farm. Mother Nature has her ways to manage the monsoon rains. It is when development (and the greedy industry players) go uncheck, and unsupervised, and a disaster like floods hit us that we realize how important rainforests are.