15 September 2009

Wak-wak - White-breasted Waterhen

White-breasted Waterhen is a common bird in my backyard, but very difficult to have a close-up picture for its very shy and skittish. I got lucky one morning when I saw this bird walked slowly and cautiously from the perimeter fence toward my house about 4 meters from my kitchen.
I rushed for my camera and slowly photographed it through the kitchen glass window. AF didn't work, so all this was by manual focus. The first time that I got a full frame picture of this species.
White-breasted Waterhen,Ruak-ruak by Redzlan A.R
White-breasted Waterhen (Amaurornis phoenicurus) with Coat Button grass flowers ( Tridax procumbens )
Ruak-ruak
Wak-wak by Redzlan A.RIt hasn't noticed my presence behind the window, and so happily sang the 'wak-wak-wak' song.
White-breasted Waterhen,Ruak-ruak by Redzlan A.R


Click the above button for this bird call.
Bird call by Arnoud B. van den Berg, at Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Have a look for more bird pictures at the Bird Photography Weekly @ Birdfreak.

11 comments:

Splendid Little Stars said...

cool bird!

Reader Wil said...

Really excellent photos! And very sharp! You must be very lucky to have such a beautiful bird in your backyard. Thanks for your visit.

gwen said...

Wow, well done on the photos. Excellent in such difficult circumstances. Such a pretty bird too.

Lois said...

Marvelous pictures Tabib! What a pretty bird. I wish I had something like that in my backyard!

rainfield61 said...

I always see this species along my jogging trek, if I am not mistaken. They stay in the bushes.

Lindy said...

Glad you had some luck in photographing this beautiful bird. Well done!

Jordan Sitorus said...

Oh wow...Those were some great closeup shots of a super shy bird!

Anonymous said...

Good job! Sometimes you got to do what you got to do.

Amila Salgado said...

Looks very good. One thing that struck me was how different the vocalisation is to the ones found here.

Amila Salgado said...

And I presume Wak-wak is its local Malay name. Interestingly the local Sinhala name for it is also onomatopoeic, which is Korawakka....which more or less tells how our guy sounds!

DeniseinVA said...

Fantastic shots!