This is the season of love on the holiday island of Langkawi. By this I mean the birds and the birds. You see this island undergo a pronounced dry season that is not experienced any where else on the peninsular Malaysia. This dry season will last for between 21/2 months to 31/2 months and usually begin around the last week of November until the first of last week of March with a longer spell during the al Niño year. This dry spell is very stressful for a rainforest and when trees of a rainforest do not get enough water they begin to flower. So while some trees need just three weeks of no rain to flower others may need 3 even 4 months for it to flower so the flowering season on Langkawi is staggered depending on the plants threshold to the dry condition.
Nevertheless for the first of our flowering plants comes the first of our fruit and for the first of our fruit comes the first or our seed and with the first seeds comes the first rains that are usually light, scattered, and far between days. as the weeks proceed the rains become heavier, covering more of the island and closer between days.
Then in the middle or late part of June we are hit by the first part of the south east Monsoons. Now the rains are much heavier, longer lasting, electrical and closer between days. This electrical show is over by august but there is a slight increase in rainfall, a little more in rain in September and a great increase in rainfall in October. In October we some time get 5 days and 5 nights of continuous rain with a break of one, two or three days before another 3 days and 3 nights of more rain. Such is October, mostly wet until the first week of November before everything tappers off rather quickly and at the end of November the start of the new dry season.
Likewise many animals choose the dry season as the season of love and courtship because when the babies arrive they arrive in time for the flowers, the fruit, the seeds, and when the rains return the greening processes long with this there are plenty of insect pollinators, fruit eating insects and during the greening processes there are the leaf eating insects. Which means plenty of food for the new arrivals, the parents and many others. So this is a great time for the nectarines, the fruit eaters and yes for those birds that that prey on small birds and animals too. A season of plenty has arrived on the island and it is the best time to be on the Island. Love is literally in the air so to speak.
On my next posting I will talk about the courtship and nesting habits of the Great Hornbill.
Happy birding.
junglewalla