“I was fortunate to observe 8 Campbell’s/Malaysian Hill Partridges (Arborophila campbelli) in a social group. This is the third time I am seeing the presumed same group at this site. They are extremely shy birds.
“I met them going down a slope to their feeding grounds at 8.45am and again on the return upslope at 11.30am. They have to cross a mountain road and usually dash across or fly across. My presence of course made them more cautious when crossing, and once the group got split up.
“I then had the opportunity to have a short recording of contact calls made by the group that had crossed over to the gang left behind. The contact calls are disyllabic notes uttered at 1.2 notes per second, lasting ~0.5-0.6 seconds with ~0.5 second gap in between. They are low frequency notes. Although they are heard by the human ear as disyllabic notes, both the waveform and sonogram suggest they are a single note (below). A short call recording is available HERE
“The image at the top is of a bird from the anterior view, showing the white frontal spots. Wells 1999, quoting Robinson (1928) suggests that the older birds have less frontal white. This particular bird, with lots of white, did appear to me to be immature and less confident in behaviour.”
Dato’ Dr Amar-Singh HSS
Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia
14th March 2019
Location: ~1,800m ASL, Gunung Brinchang, Cameron Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia
Habitat: Road running through mixed secondary & primary montane forest
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