
Making friends with a boy behind bars who whistles at all the girls passing by... Excuse the lousy camera wobble and 95% of it out of focus - I was using a DSLR and no tripod, shooting at f2.8 in the dusk (excuses, excuses)! I shot this in July 2011 at The Bamboo Train Restaurant, Battambang, Cambodia. They do a really nice non-alcoholic mohito, if ever you're there! Oh, and banana flower salad, and spring rolls... but I digress! The bird is called 'Awonghi', named after one of his calls. I think it is a Hill Myna. Wikipedia says: "The Common Hill Myna is often detected by its loud shrill descending whistles followed by other calls. It is most vocal at dawn and dusk when it is found in small groups in forest clearings high in the canopy. Both sexes can produce an extraordinarily wide range of loud calls -- whistles, wails, screeches, and gurgles, sometimes melodious and often very human-like in quality. Each individual has a repertoire between 3 and 13 such call types, which may be shared with some near neighbours of the same sex, being learned when young. There is a very rapid change of dialect with distance, such that birds living more than 15 km apart have no call-types in common with one another... in the wild, the Common Hill Mynas do not imitate other birds, although it is a widely held misconception that they do. On the other hand, in captivity, they are among the most renowned mimics, perhaps on par only with the African Grey Parrot (Psittacus erithacus). They can <b>...</b>
Cambodia
bird
cambodian bird mimic
talking bird
talking cambodian bird
khmer
common hill myna
hill myna
cambodian bird
cambodian parrot
mimic
bird call
funny
birds
caged bird
captivity
aviary
Tigger
Em