Georgetown, Malaysia

Georgetown Street Scene

The ICBES conferences typically involve a mixture of meetings and touring the local area. On the second day of the Malaysian conference, we visited Georgetown, a moderately big city on the island of Penang. Georgetown is named for King George, who was the British monarch at the time the British established their first Malaysian colony on the island of Penang. Fort Cornwalis was constructed to defend the colony.


We toured the religious district and compared architecture of the various churches, mosques, and temples. One Chinese temple was particularly impressive.


In spite of being in a densely populated city, we were able to observe some nice insect life on our tour.

One of the many Blues that I saw on this trip
Update : Plains Cupid (Chilades pandava)

Dragonfly I loved that fact that we saw a dragon in the Chinese temple
Update: Green Skimmer (Orthetrum sabina)

After our brief tour of the city, we were driven to the outskirts of town to ride a funicular train to the top of Penang Hill. This part reminded me of the gondola ride that ICBES participants took up the mountain outside of Quito two years ago.

Funicular

There was lots of wildlife to see from the top of the hill, including my first glimpse of a birdwing butterfly in the wild (no photo- it was really just a glimpse.

I apologize for the bad quality of the bird photo. The green fruit pigeon was the coolest bird that I saw on Penang Hill. It was skittish and moved around a lot. There are many species of green fruit pigeons. This one is a pink-necked green pigeon (Treron vernans) Emerald Dove (Chalcophaps indica).

Pink-necked Green Pigeon (Treron vernans)
Emerald Dove (Chalcophaps indica).

The late afternoon sun on the city of Georgetown was a memorable close to the day.

Update: Thanks much to Amila for help with species identifications.