Black-throated Sunbird

It's a common sight at Peninsular Malaysia's hill stations but common beauty is still beauty. My first pictures of this iridescent flower fairy was in Maxwell's Hill a.k.a. Bukit Larut.

I still have a few 2cm by 1cm cut outs of prints made with my late dad's Olympus Pen-f 50-90mm lens and I pasted them in my precious Ben King guide to the Birds of South East Asia, page 417 to 'supplement' the illustrations.

Great memories...

Back to the bird - it's quite easily mixed up with Gould's Sunbird and the Green-tailed but if you see it in Malaysia then it's most definitely the Black-throated because the other two are not in stock in Malaysia.

There are also a few variations to the Black-throated - the Aethopyga saturata has the johnsi subspecies in South Annam, the assamensis in Myammar, wrayi in Malaysia, the anomala in South Thailand, the galanae in South of North West Thailand and...(phew how do these ornithologists differentiate them) four more which I am too tired to name.

The female is even more challenging to separate between the Gould's and Green tail but alas this was taken in Fraser's Hill, hence it's the Black-throated's lady.  I must say though that the female's dark wing primaries are not at all mentioned in the books. I wonder why.

Presenting the lady Black-throated...