Articles

Silver Breasted Broadbill

It’s been ages since I met up with this remarkably handsome bird. The first encounter was many years ago in the montane forests of Bukit Larut. A nest above the road on my favourite bird route between the Hut Bungalow (Cendana) and Speedies (Rumah Rehat Gunung Hijau) was where I had the wonderful encounter.

This time however, I was armed with better equipment and a friendlier bird. Four or five of them were flitting around the plant nursery at Botanical Garden at the Japanese village of Bukit Tinggi. This place has given me many good materials to use. If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of a leaf-blower machine in the background. I really wished they would stop doing that and just use the good old broom instead of causing such a din and pollution. But I guess he is just doing his job and the birds and animals don't seem to mind. They just come back another time.

The silver-breasted broadbill is a found above 800m in Malaysia and would be considered a montane bird but found in lower lying areas in China. There is a peculiar sexual dimorphism in the plumage of the broadbill in that the female has a narrow silver band across the breast hence giving its name. I would think that the male would usually possess more prominent plumage than the female as it usually does in the bird world.