Contributed by Doreen Ang.
This is an edited version.
AH and I birded on Sun, 2 Dec. As usual, we covered more than one site. First stop was the Venus Drive car park. We took the 'Rubber Plantation' trail. Lousy birding, we learnt the hard way - rubber trees = more hard nuts and squirrels than birds. Too bad because it was such a beautiful trail with gushing clear stream, leave-strewn path and hardly any people. This trail ended at the open field passage behind the private estate. Here we saw a Blue-crowned Hanging Parrot, two Asian Brown Flycatchers, 3 Blue-tailed Bee-eaters and ...At 0920hrs, we were standing outside house No. 83, Jupiter Road when AH exclaimed, "Big Birds!". We saw two raptors, not too high up in the sky, as if circling up the thermals. The birds changed course and decided to glide on outstretched wings in a straight path overhead us. (Both of us observed only the second bird, sorry.) It was bigger than a Brahminy Kite but smaller than a White-bellied Sea Eagle. From below, the overall colour of the bird was 2-tone: rufous underbody and underwing coverts, and whitish everywhere else, finely barred. Its distinct black cap stood out, like a peregrine falcon's, but without the 'teardrop'. The tail was spread out like a triangular fan, also thinly barred.
We think it was an adult Rufous-bellied Eagle (a lifer for AH) because (1) it bore a strong resemblance to the illustration in Craig Robson's field guide which we used after the birds left (2) it had a black hood and (3) its overall rufous and white colouration.
After a celebratory vegetarian hor-fun, our second stop at 1250hrs was Lorong Halus. Soon as we got out of the car, we caught a glimpse of another flying raptor! It was such a waste because we couldn't identify it. Anyway, noteworthy sightings here included 4 Black Bazas, 1 Chinese Pond Heron and 1 Brown Shrike. There was only one Little Grebe in the pond. On our way back c. 1345hrs, we made an obligatory stop by the river (at the kennels) and scoped a motley group of 2 Common Sandpipers (seen sitting snugly in the hot sand but not for long), 3 Great Egrets, 8 Little Egrets, 2 Pacific Golden Plovers, 1 Marsh Sandpiper, 1 Grey Heron, 2 Chinese Pond Heron and 1 Ruddy-breasted Crake.
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