John Whitehead (1860-1899) was a British explorer who once a year starting in 1885 tried to climb Mount Kinabalu and finally succeeded in 1888, the first person to do so. When not climbing, he collected species, and thus many birds were named after him.
Three of them can be found on Mount Kinabalu, and local bird guides impress colleagues who have seen all three of them in one day (we only managed two).
Whitehead’s broadbill is a bird that I would never find without a guide because it cleverly uses green plumage to become almost invisible in a green dark forest (I think it’s a little surprising that there aren’t more birds that are green, as in camouflage , it works really well).
A study on the breeding biology of Whitehead’s Broadbill was published in May 2023 but leaves a bit of a puzzle as breeding success is described as relatively high, meaning there must be other reasons for the decline of species population.
For Spiderhunter by Whiteheadthe Latin species name Julia is also connected to Mr. Whitehead himself – his sponsor in his explorations was the British collector Arthur Hay 9th Marquis of Tweeddale (if Tweeddale sounds like I’m making this up, I swear he’s not), and this collector’s second wife was Julia Charlotte Sophia Stewart Mackenzie Marchioness of Tweeddale (at that time, people rarely filled out forms asking for their full name, which explains why there was no aversion to long names).
So, like a football stadium named after an insurance company, the broadbill ended up with a name that celebrates a sponsor.
Interestingly, the first description of a nest of Whitehead’s Spiderhunter was published only in 2015.
The likely reason for this late discovery (as well as the general difficulty of seeing this spiderhunter although it is probably not that rare) is that the bird usually spends most of its time very high in the crown of trees – the nest. is at a height of 19 meters.
Like broadbill, Spiderhunter by Whitehead is an endemic of Borneo.
According to eBird, the Black-and-crimson Oriole is a “strange looking, dark oriole”.
On a slightly more scientific level, one paper explains oriole plumage color with the presence of keto-carotenoids including canthaxanthin, adonirubin, astaxanthin, papilioerythrinone, and doradexanthin. Of course, only chemists have a rough idea of what this might mean.
I was just going to comment about the lack of a black cap on Black-capped White-eye when I read the eBird description of the species: “Note the broad white eyes of this species, as well as its smoky-black forehead and lore (despite the name, there is not much black cover).”
Mediocre minds think alike.
When seeing a Black-sided Flowerpeckerof course, everyone’s first thought is “The black part is amazing!”
Unless, of course, you saw a girl.
While the Bornean Forktail looks quite similar to the White-crowned Forktail, it seems to be a separate species, making it another Borneo endemic.
The Chestnut-hooded Laughingthrush is also a Borneo endemic and described as very common (I can’t tell from only staying on Mount Kinabalu for about a day).
In fact, a 2023 paper in the probably very popular journal “The Malaysian Forester” lists this species as the most commonly seen in the region under review.
Although it is commendable to publish a paper about the threat to laughingthrushes (including this one) of the bird trade, I still feel the lame-joke title like “No laughing matter – the ongoing illegal trade on laughingthrushes (Garrulax species) in bird markets of Java, Indonesia” should be avoided. Leave the bad jokes to me.
However, such bird capture is the main reason for the categorization of Follow Laughingthrush as Near Threatened. This is particularly rampant in Indonesia ( source ).
This laughingthrush seems to have a different taste in color, preferring a pale blue eyering to the orange-yellow of the former.
The Borneo-endemic Chestnut-crested Yuhina is a cooperative breeder – most breeding pairs (97%) in a study done here on Mount Kinabalu had helpers.
Interestingly, only about half of the helpers are related to the breeding pair …
… and only those who are not related to the couple get some parents, either by having sex with the reproductive woman or by adding an egg. I don’t think it’s ok to do this to your own relatives, but to strangers, it’s probably ok.
This is a very bad picture of a Fruit hunter. I only included it because our guide was pretty excited about it, saying it was hard to find because it didn’t vocalize. Still, a bad picture. Probably a camera fault.
eBird provides the Indigo Flycatcher a very positive review, calling it “a beautiful little gem of a flycatcher”.
Apparently, Indigo Flycatchers mainly hunt in groups, as described here.
A bit too much, the paper starts with the rather fancy statement “In animal behavior, hunting is one of the important activities that can maintain population sustainability” – does it really need to be explained that birds need to eat ?
The Little Cuckoo-Dove in fact it looks like a cross between a pigeon and a cuckoo, though it is the former, proudly (and in my opinion, mistakenly) rearing its own chicks despite the expense and annoyance of doing so.
The Latin species name of Penan Bulbul is red hair. HBW explains that Rufus means “red” while rose means “vent”, and then for no apparent reason (except to sell sex, maybe?) added that crissare means “to copulate”.
Apparently the species is a mountain type or SUV version of the Ochraceous Bulbul.
While the nominate species of Mountain Leaf Warbler has a beautiful bright yellow color, bird watchers at Mount Kinabalu will have to make do with a less attractive subspecies, kinabaluensis.
Or to put it in a slightly less judgmental way, as eBird does: “In most areas, birds are yellowish green above and brighter yellow below; the birds on Mount Kinabalu are grey-green above and whitish below.”
Little research seems to have been done on many of the birds of Mount Kinabalu. This includes Follow Cuckooshrike – the only information I can provide is the Latin species name larvae means masked.
Note the dark area around the eyes – apparently, the size of the mask is also an indicator of gender, with the male having a larger mask, but to me, the bird in my photo seems to be between the two photo provided to the HBW.
So rather than make a neutral gender statement and be accused of wokeism, I prefer not to make a statement about the gender of the bird in the photo.
According to Wikipedia, there are 20 bird species named after Coenraad Jacob Temminck (1778-1858), a Dutch zoologist, although this includes both Latin and English names as well as several subspecies. Too many, if you ask me … Anyway, included in this list Temminck’s Sunbird.
Although it is described as a medium-sized sunbird by eBird, it should be kept in mind that sunbirds are generally quite small and light – the average weight of this species is about 5 grams.
Apparently, in the case of severe drought, these birds (and several other Malaysian species described in an article) stop breeding as a survival tactic.
That could help these species deal with climate change.
My ID for the female was based only on the fact that it visited the same tree as the male, so it could be wrong – eBird admits that “the female Temminck is very conspicuous and difficult to distinguish from other sunbirds”.