Monkey Business….BORNEO (3 July)

This day was spent within the Sukau area of the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary. This was not one of the standout days of the tour for birds, with nothing spectacular seen. However, for me “birding” in Borneo is not only about birds, in spite of the implication. Borneo is a virtual treasure trove of wildlife, and the Kinabatangan area illustrates this well; it is home to an incredible 10 primate species, something that few other places in the World can lay claim to. Indeed, when I first planned on visiting the island of Borneo in 2001, my primary motivation was simian; I desperately wanted to see The Red Ape, or orangutan. Likewise, some of the group who were with me on this latest journey through Sabah, were also strongly driven to come to Borneo with the promise of seeing that odd Great Ape. And so on this day, non-avian wildlife took centre stage. It turned out to be one of the more popular days of the trip, as we enjoyed some cracking looks at many animals, which led to this being the single best day for photography on the entire tour. Borneo is generally, a challenging place for the nature photographer, with difficult light conditions in the tall, verdant, dipterocarp forests. However, Sukau is the one big exception to this, and arguably offers the best photography opportunities on the island.

We spent a relaxing day covering several areas around Sukau by canoe, and once again enjoying a comprehensive field breakfast within the boat, including a fine cup of Sabah Tea on the water! Our morning along the Menanggol River was largely uneventful, aside from some perched Long-tailed Parakeets (more usually fleetingly seen darting overhead); a striking Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker (a vastly underrated Bornean bird in my book); and some close ups of a Stork-billed Kingfisher. A Mangrove Cat-Snake expertly found coiled around a tree by our boatman was another highlight, as was a North Borneo Gibbon lounging in a tree with its “Stretch Armstrong” upper limbs extended impressively out on either side; (see Stretch Armstong here for the idea!). Gail however stole the morning, when she found the very erratic Jambu Fruit-Dove in a fruiting tree back in our lodge, which it was sharing with six different bulbul species. A few of us smooched around the back of the lodge for a short time before lunch, and were rewarded with point blank views of a gorgeous iridescent male Van Hasselt’s Sunbird.

In the afternoon it was time for the primates to take centre stage; by the close of the day we had seen 6 different primate species, (and we missed an easy one damn it!). During the afternoon we drifted beneath a giant fruiting fig tree, which was alive with the sound of Blue-eared Barbets, a sound that other frugivorous animals know well and are often drawn to for the promise of fruit at the other end. And so it also emerged on this day too; as we watched the frenzied activity of the leaf-coloured barbets picking off the ripe figs, a large movement caught our attention from the base of the same tall canopy. Soon after, a merlot-coloured arm materialized out from the foliage, revealing itself to be none other than a Bornean Orangutan! We had already seen two of these animals previously, but while our appetite for them had undoubtedly been whetted, it had not been fully satiated. This all changed when a young baby orangutan removed itself from its mother’s chest and dangled on its own in full view of a gaggle of excited people gently drifting in a canoe below! 

Once The Red Ape had moved off, (with its offspring now attached once more), we continued along the forest-lined creek, soon bumping into a troop of mischievous looking Southern Pig-tailed Macaques. However, the group were still musing how it was, we were still missing a truly satisfying encounter with another of Borneo’s celebrity primates, the spectacularly peculiar Proboscis Monkey. In particular, we were still lacking a truly gratifying experience with a bulbous-nosed male of the species. With this in mind, we returned to the main Kinabatangan River, whose gigantic girth is reminiscent of some of the larger tributaries of the mighty Amazon in South America. 

While this final afternoon appeared to be slipping out of reach, with little daylight left to find our final targets, we still managed to find three different male Proboscis Monkeys in this final Sukau "curtain call". The third time really was lucky, as this ultimate proboscis posed at full stretch above us. With 5 primates for the day, we tried for a new monkey in the last knockings of daytime, and remarkably our local guide Remy duly found it, a solitary Silvered Langur preparing to roost along the riverbank. 

The final die cast of the day was a great long look, at the Technicolor Wrinkled Hornbill, sitting by the channel bathed in late afternoon sunlight; (one of five hornbill species for the day). As you may be able to tell, Borneo has cast a long-standing spell over me, and Sukau is surely one of its greatest ecotourism assets! Mammals continued into the night, when (yet another) long duel with one of the local Oriental Bay Owls ended, again, with no owl, but did see us observe a new mammal for the trip in the form of an Island Palm Civet, and yielded another Bornean Colugo, this time viewed from a boat.

To the Bat Cave!…BORNEO (2 July)

Over the previous few days we had changed venue twice; we finished up in Danum Valley, with a nerve-racking battle with a Bornean Banded Pitta. This species had taunted us daily, but left it until our final morning to finally show itself. This was a good parting gift from Borneo Rainforest Lodge. From there we traveled to Sepilok for a single night, and a morning to admire birds like Blue-crowned Hanging-Parrot and Red-naped and Diard’s Trogons from the state-of-the-art canopy walkway there. After that we transferred by boat to Sukau, quickly chasing after a pack of Bornean Pigmy Elephants, (by canoe), on our first afternoon, when 27-40 animals were seen in a large noisy herd, regularly snorting and trumpeting from the banks.

For our full day out of Sukau, we began our day just as the sun rose, by boarding our private canoe, and gently making our way down a forested creek-named Menanggol. We spent the first part of the morning there, even taking our very well organized breakfast in the canoe-sipping hot tea with the sounds of the Bornean rainforest all around is no bad thing! A highlight of the creek was a pair of White-fronted Falconets perched on a dead tree; and all getting crippling looks at the crippling looking Hooded Pitta, as it called from a rainforest vine. In the late morning, and still missing Sukau’s most famous bird, the endangered Storm’s Stork, we returned to the main river, the Kinabatangan, one of the longest rivers on the island at 560 km long, and tried another spot. This led to a series of good raptors, with Jerdon’s Baza, Wallace’s Hawk-Eagle, Changeable Hawk-Eagle, Lesser and Grey-headed Fish-Eagles, and Rufous-bellied Eagle all featuring before the end of the morning. 

The undoubted highlight though occurred when two large shapes were seen on the wing overhead. This time though, they were not raptors but storks, and no other than Storm’s Storks, our main morning target species. We raced up underneath them, getting cracking looks at them in flight, and watched as they languidly circled, gradually lowering their altitude, and suddenly alighting in a riverside tree, in full glorious view. The photographers in the boat, like me, went into overdrive at this. This striking forest-dwelling stork is in a bad way, numbering only around 300 adult birds left in the wild, and we were watching 2 of them! This is not only their Bornean stronghold but their global stronghold, so that, for now, they are usually seen in this area if several days are taken.

After a handsome morning we retired to the lodge for lunch and then made a visit to the bat caves in Gomantong. A visit to this site is undoubtedly fascinating, although not altogether pleasant. The large limestone caverns are home to hundreds of thousands of bats – mostly Wrinkle-lipped Bats, which we saw plenty of clinging to their rocky roost sites. Alongside the bats thousands of swiftlets also nest in the caves, of 4 species: Glossy, Mossy-nest, Black-nest, and White-nest Swiftlets. The latter three species are known as echolocating swifts, as they navigate in much the same way as bats do. The other odd fact about the latter three species is, they are essentially identical by sight, and can therefore only be reliably identified by seeing them perched on their distinctive nests. And so, once we saw one of these unremarkable birds clinging to a nest that appeared largely like a lump of moss, we knew we could now safely say we had seen a “clean” Mossy-nest Swiftlet. Similarly, when we put the spotlight on another unremarkable bird sitting on a largely white nest, we knew we could now count White-nest Swiftlet on our list.  The latter species is the most valuable one of them all, for their white nests are comprised entirely of the bird’s saliva, and are sold for high sums of money as the ingredient of Birds Nest Soup. The value of the birds, or more specifically, their saliva becomes all top clear when you read online that a kilogram of the material can fetch up to $2500 US dollars for a single kilogram! The cave was a creepy place, crawling with rusty red cockroaches that swarmed over the floor and the vast piles of odorous bat guano that dominated the terrestrial landscape. We also saw a Müller’s Rat scurry past, a species that specializes in caves like this, and also grimaced at the large Cave (Long-legged) Centipedes that scuttled up the cave walls. All around us the pungent smell of ammonia hung in the air. It was, at times, cloying, but somehow we got used to it, and made a full circuit of the cave, before emerging back into daylight, and the by now overpoweringly fragrant rainforest air. Our afternoon’s birding was peppered by long bursts of rain, which curtailed much of what we did. However, we did see some stellar mammals, including a troop of Pig-tailed Macaques lurking above the mouth of the cave, a mob of Maroon Langurs (Red Langurs), a Red Giant Flying Squirrel peering out of a cavity; and the amusing vision of a mother and baby Bornean Orangutan sitting on the railing of one of the cave worker’s houses, out of the rain, while they ripped chunks out of a large Jackfruit. At the end of the day, once darkness had descended we returned to the creek near our lodge in Sukau, where we tried, and failed to find a pair of calling Oriental Bay Owls, a very frustrating experience indeed!!!