BORNEO BIRDING, PART I (12/22/00)

We went to Borneo for its birds. What we saw was a whole lot more.

Though the headhunters are gone, Borneo remains a wild place that still conjures images of steaming jungles filled with a profusion of strange and little-known creatures. Flying lizards, giant wood frogs, full grown deer the size of cats, pigs with beards, plants that eat animals, monkeys that dive for crabs and the Wild Man of Borneo, the Orang Utan, are just some of the wonders that enchant vigilant visitors.

“Borneo? Where is that?” Borneo, 12 time zones away on the complete other side of the world from us, is the third largest island in the world and is shared by three countries: Malaysia in the top portion, Indonesia on the underside, and Brunei, the tiny multimillionaire’s sultanate in the northeast. Not only is this island interesting for its wildlife but also for its historic role in World War II.

Sabah, the state in Malaysian Borneo where we spent two weeks, lies between 4 and 8 degrees north of the equator with a tropical but pleasant climate. We were there in March, following the rainiest time of the year. We were surprised to find how well Sabah is prepared for tourists with a sophisticated infrastructure that includes luxury hotels and remote lodges, delicious food and a friendly populace.

For this long trip, we left Boston on a day flight, overnighted in London and continued the next day to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where we met our group of ten other birders. From there we flew two hours east to Koto Kinabalu, one of the principal Saban cities. We arose early the next morning to bird at nearby coastal marshes and mudflats, where we enjoyed a wide range of waterbirds, including the globally threatened Chinese egret, and an array of arresting kingfishers, among which was a stork-billed kingfisher. Try to picture such a bird in your mind’s eye!

In the afternoon, we drove up to Mt. Kinabalu National Park at 5100 feet, where the awe inspiring granite peak of Mt. Kinabalu, the highest landmark at 13,435 ft between New Guinea and the Himalayas towers over the park and lures travelers to explore her lush, cloud-enshrouded forests.

Although many visitors here enjoy making the ascent to the summit, we concentrated our three days on roads and trails in the area not far from our cabins, searching among huge moss-clad sentinels, giant pitcher plants and blooming shrubs for a number of endemic bird and mammal species, four of which bear the name of John Whitehead, a British explorer of the 1880’s. Although we tried diligently to locate the trio of Whitehead-named birds (the spiderhunter, the trogon and the broadbill), we succeeded only with the Whitehead’s pygmy squirrel, an amazing animal with ear-tufts as long as its body.

Although we missed the very special “Whitehead birds,” we encountered one exciting bird after another, birds with names like pied triller, common iora , laughing and whistling thrushes, yuhinas, mugimaki flycatcher and mountain wren-babbler. One of my favorites was the sensational Bornean treepie, an 18” bird in the same family with jays and crows in shades of yellow, tan and gray with a very long graduated tail. Several fed in the trees near our dining hall, so we could see them often.

After returning to Kota Kinabalu, we flew an hour further east to the Danum Valley, arriving late in the afternoon so that we could make the three-hour drive to the Borneo Rainforest Lodge after dark. This plan, to provide us the chance to view nocturnal mammals on our way, proved to be just as productive as our leaders had hoped.

Our first mammals were Indian elephants, native also to Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Malaya and Sumatra, where they are the ones commonly trained for forestry work. We were alerted to their imminence by increasing amounts of dung piles in the road, and suddenly —there they were!. Far smaller than their African cousins, they also have smaller ears and one lip at the end of their trunk rather than two. At first they seemed oblivious of our presence, but then, as unbelievable as any magician’s trick, they vanished — melted — right in front of our eyes into the enfolding forest. Had we really seen these highly endangered animals, or were they just visions inspired by our imagination?

A few more miles down the road, the lights of our bus beamed on a mid-road drama. A civet, a cat-like mammal, was in the process of attacking a snake. The snake struck out at its tormentor again and again. The civet returned blow after blow. The snake curled into a protective position. The civet continued striking until it became obvious that it was the victor. The scene came to a close with the civet dragging its prey off of stage center and into the darkness.

The evening’s encore evolved when we reached a river crossing whose bridge had washed away in a gargantuan flood a few weeks earlier. We could only imagine the sad fate of all the little villages that had lain along the river’s bank. But now we faced our own predicament. How were we to bridge the wide river on the logs that presently spanned the abyss? That difficulty was dismissed when staff members from the lodge took each of us by the arm and led us across the slippery, perilous crossing. We were glad that darkness veiled the frightening aspects of this venture!

Once on the other side, we loaded up, four of us to a 4-wheel vehicle, to be transported several miles through deep, seemingly impassable, mud to the lodge. What a thrilling beginning to a most memorable wildlife experience! Remember, I did say that Borneo was a wild place!

GRAPHIC OF TREEPIE BY Dr. Richard Kuehn

(To be continued)