FAUNA AND FLORA O F MANGROVE SWAMPS
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sufficiently. The species involved are whimbrel Numenius phaeopus (L.),
redshank Tringa totanus (L.) and Terek sandpiper Tringa terek Latham
[= Xenus cinereus (Guldenstadt)]. No doubt other waders recorded
from Malaya will do the same. Normally these birds rest on bare ground
or in fields behind the mangroves, but since such are completely absent
from Malaya this perching habit has been adopted. I have seen
whimbrel and redshank perching in trees of Avicennia marina var. alba
at Beiiut just north of Singapore and on sonneratia trees at the inner
end of Sandakan harbour in Sabah.
FIG. 45. Redshanks perching on a branch of a rhizophora a t high tide. Sandakan Bay,
January 1967, during a rain storm.
Torres Strait pigeons Ducula (or Myristicivora) spillirrhoa (a. R.
Gray) during the summer months breed on the mangrove trees associated with the low-wooded-island reefs of the Great Barrier Reef.
These birds feed on the mainland and that they navigate by sight is
clear from the manner in which they get lost whenever a rain storm
comes up late in the afternoon. Pied imperial pigeons Ducula (or
Myristicivora) bicolor (Scop.) frequent islands off the Malayan coast. It
is not known where they nest but the coloured illustration in Robinson
and Chasen (1936) indicates that they may be similar in habit to Torres
Strait pigeons.
Woodpeckers Picus viridanus Blyth and P . vittatus Vieillot seek for
insect larvae in the older trees of the landward fringe in Malaya and
peninsular Thailand.