I haven't done this for a loooonngg time, but I felt like writing
another one, who knows maybe more will follow :P
This time I want to bring
forward a bird so damn cute, I've wanted to talk about ever since I saw one in
the jungles of Borneo but haven't had enough information on it. It's the
smallest bird of prey in the world (well it's tied with the black-thighed
falconet since they're very closely related) the Sabah endemic Bornean
Falconet, Microhierax
latifrons a species classified as Near Threatened by the IUCN. Not much has
been written about this Bornean endemic, though being the smallest raptor means
the traditional foods that other raptors eat are off the menu for these guys.
They tend to hunt insects, small birds and small reptiles more than mammals. M.latifrons is strange in that it is an
endemic constrained to the northern corner of Borneo but exists in primary
forests which are connected to forests into Sarawak and Kalimantan where they
are replaced by the Black Thighed Falconet, Microhierax
fringillarius (Sheldon, Lim, & Moyle, 2015). The two species are almost indistinguishable and are very
similar in habits including being communal hunters and breeders where several
members of both sexes will assist in feeding the babies (Phillipps & Phillipps, 2014). During the early Pleiocene a lot of birds are believed to
have been forced into rainforest refugias by the glaciation event which caused
rainforest to retract when the world became drier, the separation by these
refugias allowed for speciation between the north eastern populations in what
is now Sabah separate from the other populations around Borneo, M.latifrons is one of those species (Sheldon et al., 2015).
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| Male Bornean Falconet, Microhierax latifrons (Picture from wikimedia commons) |
One of the interesting thing I found out about the Bornean
Falconet is that unlike the Black-Thighed Falconet, the Bornean Falconet are in
fact sexually dimorphic (Phillipps & Phillipps, 2014), where the females are different to the males and in a
strange twist of fate the females are actually more colourful *shock horror* I can
only assume that this may be a trait for sexual selection like in most birds,
it would definitely be interesting to find out.
Side note, I saw this beautiful raptor while I was in Borneo
for part of my university degree, they’re found in primary lowland rainforests
of Sabah but sadly I didn’t get a photo of it D:
Phillipps, Q.,
& Phillipps, K. (2014). Phillipps'
Field Guide to the Birds of Borneo:
Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei, and
Kalimantan (3rd ed.). United Kingdom: John Beaufoy
Publishing Ltd.
Sheldon, F. H., Lim, H. C., & Moyle, R. G. (2015). Return to the
Malay Archipelago: the biogeography of Sundaic rainforest birds. Journal of Ornithology, 156(1), 91-113.
doi:10.1007/s10336-015-1188-3
