The final part of the Borneo account covers two lowland rainforest areas in eastern Sabah. Danum Valley is a superb area of virgin rainforest but it can be rather hard to bird; on the other hand Tabin has been selectively logged and much of it is secondary growth surrounded by oil palm, so although it does not have as many key species as Danum, a lot of them are easier to see. Tabin is particularly good for night drives as owls, civets and Leopard Cats leave the forest and go into the oil palm to hunt the many rats that occur there. We spent two nights at Tabin and four at Danum.
Our lodge at Tabin was right by a river and abutted the forest, various wildlife could be seen on the balcony such as these Oriental Pied Hornbills ……
… and this male Pig-tailed Macaque
A large troop of Pig-tailed Macaques patrolled the area behind the chalets. The females often took to sitting on the rocks mid-stream, keeping their youngsters out of trouble.
Normally seen only in flight or perched high in a tree, we were amazed to see this Storm’s Stork walking around in the open near the lodge.
Early morning mist at Tabin
Flying Squirrels, including this Thomas’ Flying Squirrel were common at Tabin and Danum. We even got to see them in flight.
Far smaller was this diminutive Plain Pygmy Squirrel, perhaps the smallest squirrel in the world.
One trail led to the ‘mud volcano’. Heat from volcanic action pushes mud to the surface like a slow motion geysir.
Of all the hornbills the Helmeted is the most spectacular, both visually and acoustically. This one flew over whilst we were at the mud volcano …
.. and perched up nicely for photos.
Danum Valley Lodge gives great accommodation and superb food – at a price!
One of the features of Danum reserve is the canopy walkway …..
… which allows you to get great views into the tree tops, although moving around a swaying bridge to get good views is fraught with difficulty.
One day we climbed the coffin cliff trail on the far side of the river, named as an ancient burial site of indigenous people was found there. Climbing several hundred metres of elevation in the near 100% humidity was exhausting but was most rewarding – see photo of Blue Banded Pitta below.
From here we could get a great view down onto the lodge
In such a hot and humid environment the early morning mists produced spectacular effects.
Most days followed the same pattern, early morning along the roads then along the narrow trails once the birds became active.
Along with heat and humidity, Asian tropical forests have another unpleasant feature – leechs. Initially they caused some consternation within the group but we soon got used to their presence and flicked most off before they could start blood sucking. I only got three leech bites but they took three or four weeks to completely heal.
As well as wonderful birds and mammals Danum has a range of exquisite butterflies, I’m afraid I don’t know their names.
We saw many birds and I photographed what I could. Here is a selection – Ferruginous Babbler
Ruby-cheeked Sunbird
Whiskered Treeswift
Banded Broadbill
Female Grey-and-Buff Woodpecker
We did a night drive on each of our four nights at Danum. They weren’t as productive as at Tabin but we did come across this Banded Palm Civet.
… this huge roosting Rhinoceros Hornbill …
and a tiny roosting Yellow-bellied Prinia.
But the best birds of Danum where the Pittas. Not needing to spend hours waiting for Bristleheads to appear gave us time to locate these mega elusive dwellers of the forest floor. Borneo has four endemic species of Pitta and either here or at Tabin and we saw them all. This Blue-banded Pitta required an exhausting hike up the coffin cliff trail but after a bit of effort we finally got great views of this seldom seen species.
Near the lodge we came across this Blue-headed Pitta but light levels were very low and this was the best I could do.
This murky shot of the another endemic, the Black-headed Pitta, pushes the definition of a ‘record shot’ to its limits. The final endemic Pitta is Bornean Banded Pitta which we saw (but couldn’t photograph) at Tabin.
One of the final birds of the trip was this Crested Honey-buzzard soaring over the lodge on our final morning.
And so concluded an excellent trip to Sabah in Borneo. I had about 50 life birds and 25 life mammals including some megas like Orang Utan, Bornean Gibbon, Proboscis Monkey, Colugo, Binturong, Leopard Cat, Bearded Pig. Of course on a trip like this you don’t see all the endemics, that would take multiple trips and require visits to the province of Sarawak and Indonesian Kalimantan, but we did very well indeed. Will I go back? I can’t say for sure as there are so many wonderful places in the tropics to visit, but I highly recommend it to anyone with a love of wildlife.
This post covers two nearby sites in the lowlands. Gomantong Caves, famed for its bat colonies plus large numbers of nesting echo-locating swiftlets and the lodge at Sukau on the Kinabatanga River where a series of boat trips on the river and its narrow tributaries gave multiple opportunities to see and photograph the wildlife. Whilst at Kinabalu we got caught in as severe rain storm and my bridge camera got wet. Although it could still take photos I couldn’t use the zoom function, or change any of the settings, so it was effectively useless. Fortunately leader Chris Kehoe offered me the use of his camera when we got to Sukau, as he only carried one to obtain photos for the tour report, a commitment he was happy to pass on to me. So thanks to Chris’ generosity I was able to continue to document this excellent trip. After some last minute birding on Mount Kinabalu we crossed a sea of unbroken oil palm plantations on our way to Sukau and the Kinabatanga River. Unlike the parts of the Sunda region, Borneo has very poor soil and is unsuitable for large scale rice production. As a result as recently as the late 40s the island had a small population and was an almost unbroken expanse of virgin rainforest. The development of a strain of oil palm that could grow on poor soils has changed all that and now almost all lowland forest has been converted to plantation. Even along the Kinabatanga River with its wonderful range of wildlife, oil palm crowds in and even the narrow strip of riverine forest is broken in parts by plantations. Before we got to the river we stopped at the famous Gomantong Caves. Featured on BBC wildlife programs, this is the place to see all three species of echo-locating swiftlets on the nest, which is the only safe way to tell them apart, as each species nest is highly distinctive.
The entrance to Gomantong Caves.
There is a boardwalk around the main chamber but it is covered with bat and swiftlet droppings.
The entire floor of the chamber consists of a huge pile of bat poo several metres high, as a result the entire place, including the boardwalk and hand rail is covered in cockroaches.
Harvesting swiftlet nests for birds nest soup is highly lucrative. As the commercial value of the caves is so high the owners guard against poachers. The smell of ammonia from the huge mound of bat poo behind the guards shelter is overwhelming, so this cannot be a pleasant place to make a living.
Edible nest swiftlet nests. A single white pure spittle nest of a Edible-nest Swiftlet retails at about US$50. Those of Black-nest Swiftlets are worth less as they include feathers . Those of Mossy-nest Swiftlets, composed of moss bound with spit, are worthless. These days many locals try to’farm’ swiftlets in towns by converting upper floors of buildings into swiftlet caves by blacking them out and playing recordings to attract them. As I didn’t have a camera with telephoto capability until after the visit to the caves this photo was taken from the internet, see louisdigital.com
At long last, a breath of fresh air.
As we left the caves we came across a mother and baby Orang Utan, part of a small group marooned in this island of forest in a sea of oil palm . I only had my pocket camera so this highly magnified shot is the best I could do. I think it was my obvious disappointment of not being able to properly photograph this amazing animal that led Chris to lend me this camera.
At dusk many thousands of Wrinkle-lipped Bats emerge but from our viewpoint we could only see a few.
… and we saw the shadowy shapes of a Bat Hawk chasing it’s supper.
Our lodge in this area was at Sukau on the bank of the Kinabatenga River. From here we did five half day trips on the main river and its tributaries. It was often misty in the early morning …
… but soon the mist cleared and by the time we had entered the quiet backwaters the sun was up. Our main target in these side channels was the mega-elusive Bornean Ground Cuckoo, which we heard but did not see.
The bizarre Proboscis Monkey was common in the riparian vegetation but they moved quickly and seldom sat in the open for long and so were difficult to photograph …
… but I did get this shot of a mature male with his enormous nose and white underpants.
The area was a mecca for hornbills with five species being seen. This is a Wrinkled Hornbill.
Oriental Pied Hornbill
Asian Black Hornbill. The white stripe on the head is only seen in a minority of male birds.
The enormous Rhinoceros Hornbill
There were plenty of raptors along the river such as this Grey-headed Fish Eagle.
Oriental Darters were common.
Purple Heron and the resident modesta race of Great Egret. Considerably smaller than the migrant race from mainland Asia (no bigger than the Purple Heron), this form has been considered a separate species.
I was particularly pleased to get such good views of Storm’s Stork. This species has declined greatly and the riverine forests of Borneo are it’s last stronghold. It was the last of the world’s 17 species of stork for my list.
Long-tailed Macaques were common ….
as were Monitor Lizards ….
… and even the occasional Estuarine Crocodile was seen.
This Masked Palm Civet swam across the river in front of our boat ….
and emerged rather bedraggled on the far bank.
Along the bank of the main river we saw several Bornean Pygmy Elephants. They differ considerably in size from Asian Elephants of the mainland and maybe should be treated as a different species.
But by far the best observation along the river was a flock of Bornean Bristleheads which qualified as my ‘bird of the trip’. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Bristleheads are a monotypic Family and are indeed the last family I needed to see. We did see some later at Danum Valley but not so well and this fortuitous encounter along the river saved us lots of time at Danum which was put to good use. As an aside, contra to my earlier post on the bird Families, the new checklist by Lynx/BLI did NOT treat the New Zealand Kakapo as a monotypic family and their cover illustration has been changed accordingly.
So after two and half days we said goodbye to Sukau, the Kinabatenga River and its glorious vistas and headed off for rainforest lodges to the south.
This is the first of three posts about my June/July trip to Borneo. This post covers the Kota Kinabalu area, the Crocker Range and the Mount Kinabalu area.
The tour was organised by Birdquest and led by Borneo expert Chris Kehoe and visited the state of Sabah in the Malaysian portion of the island.
I flew out a day before the tour started, mainly to get over the jet lag but only did a bit of birding along the bay opposite the hotel in the capital Kota Kinabalu. This dark morph Pacific Reef Egret was only about 100m from the hotel.
The first afternoon was spent near the city looking at ponds adjacent to some rice paddies. As well as wetland birds we saw many munias, including the endemic Dusky Munia and and the seldom seen Pin-tailed Parrotfinch.
Wandering Whistling Ducks (above), Cinnamon Bitterns and other herons and egrets, Buff-banded Rails and White-winged Terns could all be seen in these marshy areas.
As dusk approached we stopped by a beach to look for Malaysian Plovers ….
…. which we soon located. What wasn’t expected was in June was Siberian breeding Whimbrels, Grey-tailed Tattlers and Greater Sandplovers.
The following day we stopped at the Rafflesia reserve in the Crocker range, inland from Kota Kinabalu.
Here we saw our first montane species, like this Grey-chinned Minivet and ….
… our only Bornean Leafbird of the trip. This completes my set of Leafbirds, a group of eleven species found only in southern and south-eastern Asia.
Overhead Blyth’s Hawk-eagles showed well.
We continued on to Mount Kinabalu, at 4101m the highest peak between the Himalayas and the Snow Mountains of New Guinea. Our hotel, where we were to stay for five nights was situated just outside the national park and gave a wonderful view of the mountain in the evening.
There are many montane specialities in Kinabalu NP, some are easy to see but many are not. This Whitehead’s Broadbill was a particular target, we only saw a pair. It was voted bird of the trip, but not by me – more of that later.
John Whitehead (1860 – 1899) was an ornithologist who collected in Borneo. He has three birds named after him, all are difficult to see: the Broadbill, this Whitehead’s Trogon and the mega elusive Whitehead’s Spiderhunter, which we failed to see. Once again I will quote Meat Loaf ‘two out of three ain’t bad’!
If it is any compensation for dipping on his spiderhunter, we did see the cute little Whitehead’s Pygmy Squirrel – its about the size of a mouse!
Another mega we tracked down at Kinabalu was this Fruithunter, a member of the thrush family.
Another montane speciality (although not a Borneo endemic) is Indigo Flycatcher.
Carnivorous pitcher plants could be seen along the higher trails but we never saw a Rafflesia, the biggest flower in the world.
One day half the group did the strenuous hike up the Mt Kinabalu summit trail. The hike to the top, which is very popular, involves a 2000m ascent, we did about a 500m ascent but that was enough to leave me knackered.
This is a Mountain Blackeye, a type of white-eye found mainly on the higher trail. Our main target was the increasingly rare Kinabalu Friendly Warbler, which is quite approachable once actually found. It seems that global warming is pushing the species further and further up the mountain every year. At one stage it will run out of mountain to retreat to.
In view of the erosion caused by the thousands who ascend the mountain on a regular basis, much of the trail has been converted to a series of steps. Each step is somewhat irregular and rather higher than I would have liked and this resulted in considerable knee discomfort. It is disconcerting when you read that on the Kinabalu Summit Race, participants can run from the park gate (4km and 500m lower than where we started) to the top and back again in two hours and fifty minutes.
It must be emphasised that although Borneo has the reputation of being a wild, remote place this is far from the truth. Places like Kinabalu National Park are the exception. Away from these islands of natural habitat Borneo is a sea of oil palm plantation. Ignore the construction in the foreground. The background shows oil palm to the horizon.
On 28th June I was part of a birding group in a small boat, slowly drifting down a tributary of the Kinabatenga River in Sabah, Borneo when our leader Chris Kehoe exclaimed that he could hear Bristleheads, a few minutes later a small flock of five or more bizarrely shaped red, black and yellow birds appeared in the tops of the riverine forest. Our first Bornean Bristleheads of the tour and the end of a thirty five year quest to see all the bird Families of the world!
Well what is a bird Family; well I don’t mean this!
Wood Duck and ducklings – photo from the internet.
A bird Family is a taxonomic unit above that of Genus and below that of Order. For the uninitiated I’d better summarise the essential, but sometimes confusing, subject of the classification of life.
To make sense of the many million types of organisms in existence a classification methodology based on Latin nomenclature was introduced by Linnaeus in 1735, which has been refined into the current system. It is universally applicable to all forms of life and strict rules govern its application, so that particular name is applicable to a single species and to no other.
All life is divided into six Kingdoms, three of microscopic organisms, plus fungi, plants and animals. Each Kingdom is divided into Phyla for example in animals all vertebrates are in the Phylum Chordata. Each Phylum is in turn divided into a number of Classes, in Chordata there are 6 Classes of fish, plus one each of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Each Class is divided into Orders and each Order into Families. In birds the huge group known as the passerines is a single Order Passeriformes and this is composed of 129 Families. For example the tits and chickadees form the Family Paridae and this in turn is divided into 61 Species in 14 Genera. Species can be further subdivided into subspecies where there is variation within a single species.
So the classification of our familiar Marsh Tit from the UK would be
Kingdom – Animalia – animals
Phylum – Chordata – vertebrates and allies
Class – Aves – birds
Order – Passeriformes – passerines or ‘perching birds’
Family – Paridae – tits and chickadees
Genus – Poecile – a collection of 15 mainly black, brown and white tits from the northern hemisphere
Species – Poecile pallustris – Marsh Tit
Subspecies – Poecile pallustris dresseri – the subspecies or race of Marsh Tit occurring in the UK
So what has all this to do with my recent trip to Sabah in Borneo. Of course I have been trying to see as many of the world’s bird species over the past 35 years (and, as sometimes subspecies are ‘upgraded’ to full species when new information about their breeding biology and genetics becomes available, I’ve been taking note of them as well) but many birders have realised is that to see as wide a range of bird groups as possible it is necessary to see the bird Families of the world. In total there are 232 extant Families (plus 5 uncertain groups or Incertae sedis that have still to be decided on).
The trouble is that whilst many Families are obvious to anyone interested in birds, for example all duck, geese and swans (except one) form one Family, grebes another and divers yet another, other groups are more obscure and changes are continually made as DNA evidence reveals relationships that morphology alone cannot; owls fall into two Families, Old World warblers have been placed in about six different Families and a few oddities like Przevalski’s Rosefinch and Spotted Wren-babbler are so unique that they have been placed in Families all of their own (the latter only a few months ago after DNA evidence showed it was only distant related to other Wren-babblers)
It is relatively easy to see the bulk of the Families once you have travelled to the major faunal regions of the world, it these oddball Families that present the challenge, for example Shoebill in Africa, Kagu in New Caledonia, Picathartes in West Africa or Przevalski’s Rosefinch in Tibet, not necessarily because they are hard to see but because it takes a lot of travel to get round to see them all. In recent years I have concentrated on seeing the last few and the Bornean Bristlehead, the sole member of its Family, was the last.
Some Families are obvious, even to the non-birder. All Hummingbirds are clearly related and all 345 species are in a single Family the Trochilidae. Peacock Coquette – photo from the Internet Bird Collection
Birds of prey or raptors however fall across five Families, New World vultures form one, hawks, eagles, kites and Old World vultures form another, the Osprey and Secretary Bird are in Families of its own, whilst the fifth, the Falcons aren’t even closely related to other raptors and are now count the passerines and parrots as their nearest relatives. Bonelli’s Eagle: photo from Internet Bird Collection
There are many monospecific Families, birds that have no close living relatives. This Przevalski’s Rosefinch or Pink-tailed Bunting from Tibet, is neither a finch nor a bunting but dates from a time before those two Families diverged. Photo from the Internet Bird Collection.
There have losses as well as gains, the diverse Hawaiian Honeycreepers were once considered to constitute a Family but now they are know to be just aberrant finches, most closely related to the Asian rosefinches. Iiwi -photo from the Internet Bird Collection.
Its a bit of a rubbish photo but it was taken at some distance, from a moving boat and on a borrowed camera! Borneo Bristlehead, Kinabatenga River, Sabah, Borneo
To get a better idea what this mega looks like, here is a close up shot by James Eaton from the Internet Bird Collection.
But although I am very happy to have fulfilled my ambition to see all the world’s bird Families I cannot be complacent. I follow the species and Family list as produced by the IOC (International Bird Committee) which treats the Sapayoa of the Choco region of northern South America and Panama (below) as a member of the Old World Broadbills. This species has been treated as a Manakin then a Tyrant Flycatcher, before DNA evidence showed conclusively it was a New World representative of the Broadbills. The Clements/Cornell checklist agrees in principle but places it in its own Family next to the Broadbills. I have heard, but not seen this species in Colombia.
The enigmatic Sapayoa: Photo from the Internet Bird Collection
The Zeledonia or Wrenthrush was once considered in its own Family but then got moved to the Parulidae, the New World Warblers and then to the limbo of Incertae Sedis. There have been suggestions recently that it may again regain monospecific Family status. A trip to Costa Rica would be needed to see this beauty.
Zeledonia: Photo from the Internet Bird Collection.
And finally and most worryingly of all, the publisher Lynx Editions, in conjunction with Birdlife International are producing an Illustrated Checklist of Birds of the World. This is a wholly new concept for a checklist, the validity of each species being determined by a mathematical ranking. The first volume, due in a month or so, covers the non-passerines and the advertising blurb of the cover shows the non-passerine Families they recognise. This appears to show that they recognise the enigmatic flightless New Zealand parrot, the Kakapo as a monospecific Family. The Kakapo is on the brink of extinction and the few remaining birds have been translocated to an island where no-one but the wardens/researches are allowed to go. All TV film/video of this species appears to be of a captive individual known as Sirocco. The chances of ever seeing a wild individual of this species/Family would appear to be zero.
Of course the Family or species list produced by Birdlife International may not be accepted by the mainstream checklists of Clements/Cornell and the IOC, but even if the Kakapo does eventually get universally accepted as a new Family, I will have at least been able to say that at one stage in my life I had seen all the world’s bird Families!
Sirocco – the tame Kakapo. Photo from the Internet
The 232 Bird Familes plus 5 Icertae sedis as recognised by the IOC. The Hawaiian Oo’s are now extinct and are not included in the total.
