Birding Sabah - Part 2

The following is part two of a series of daily diary-entries from a month-long birding trip fellow young-birder Brandon Hewitt and I undertook in Sabah, Borneo, during February 2016.

For anyone who has come to this page looking for a brief "went here, saw this" report, you've come to the wrong place! However just such a version of this trip report is now up on cloudbirders.com, and can be viewed HERE

If after reading this (and the following) posts you have any questions about birds we saw, places we visited or just generally birding in Sabah, feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to get back to you ASAP :)

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January 31st (Sunday)

The 3:30 wakeup wasn’t so bad.

The climb up the mountain was.

And we have to do it three more times…

The climb was cool, at least. We climbed to roughly 1820m, so it it was quite chilly at the top. It was dark too - the moonlight was enough for us to make our way up the roads, but when we reached the top at Timpohon Gate it was 5:30am and still pitch black in the undergrowth, only the faintest glow visible around the edges of the mountain peak. We sat down to wait for a while, knowing that the thrushes would start to become active when there was just enough light to feed by.

Everett’s Thrush is a bit of an enigma - one of the top targets of any Mt Kinabalu trip, Everett’s is a split from Island Thrush, endemic to Borneo and highly localised to the tops of a few mountains, of which Kinabalu is the most accessible. It’s also very shy and retiring. Not many people who stake it out end up seeing it, even though they’re resident on the mountaintop just below the gate.

We couldn’t justify a trip to the mountain without at least trying for it though, so there we sat.

 

Morning on the mountainside

As light began to spread though the trees, we paced the top of the road. Nothing much moving, the dawn chorus was much more active down in the valley than here on the mountainside. A thrush appeared, causing momentary panic before we realised it was a Bornean Whistling-thrush, completely dark blue-grey rather than the pale grey and orange of our target.

The sun peaked over the side of the mountain, and our chance for Everett’s was essentially lost for the morning. From what little is known about them, they appear on the roadside verges and at select sections of track (their favoured track is currently closed, which is a big blow to our plans) in the very early morning, then disappear deep into the forest for the rest of the day.

Disappointed, but not in the least surprised, we made our way down the mountain a few hundred meters to the Kiau Lookout to, once again, stake out the Whitehead’s Broadbills. To cut a depressing hour-long story short, no Broadbills appeared. I walked the stretch of road over and over, playing the calls, waiting, playing them again, but nothing. No response.

I was so focused on listening for Broadbills that I almost missed another sound emanating from deep within the undergrowth - a resonant hoot, repeated every few seconds. The call of Bornean Bald Laughing Thrush.

I played the tape in response, grudgingly shelving the hunt for Broadbills. The bird and I had a back-and-forth for about ten minutes, but he wasn’t coming any closer. It did sound like he had moved higher up in the bushes, though. I walked around the corner (uphill) to try and get a better vantage point into the treetops, ignoring my screaming thigh muscles as I pulled myself over the rise. I played the call again - and this time the response did seem to come a bit closer.

I stopped the call and waited, as sometimes the sudden disappearance of a rival will make birds come in to check out what’s going on. Turns out my calling probably made zero difference to what the bird was already planning to do though, as it erupted out of the bushes and across the road in the company of 10-15 Chestnut-hooded Laughing-thrushes, clearly all traveling in a mixed feeding flock. The Bald stuck around in an exposed position just long enough for me to get a few blurry frames, before disappearing into the thick bushes to continue its furtive hooting.

With this excellent tick under the belt, We gave up the search for Broadbills and walked to the entrance of the Mempaning trail, which leads from a few corners below the Kiau lookout back down the hill towards HQ. As soon as we entered we came across a feeding flock, again mostly Chestnut-hooded Laughing-thrushes, but this time with a few Sunda Laughing-thrushes mixed in, a very welcome tick with half of our time on Kinabalu gone.

We continued down the trail, stopping to look at a male Crimson-headed Partridge just off the track. By this time the sun was high, and the forest fell nearly silent. It remained this way even when birds were present. A flutter of movement roughly half an hour into the walk alerted us to the presence of a pair of Fruithunters - scarce montane/submontane thrush relatives, who are only really reliable in the Crocker Range. An excellent tick on Mount Kinabalu. Even the Fruithunters were absolutely silent, and for the five minutes we watched them neither so much as opened their beak.

Fruithunter

One bird that did break the silence was a distant Whitehead’s Spiderhunter. For what is generally considered the hardest of the Whitehead’s Trio, the Spiderhunters sure have been putting on a good show for us during the last few days. For them and the Fruithunters to have moved from their usual haunts in Crocker over to Kinabalu means it was probably an unusually good breeding season for montane birds.

The Mempaning trail exited onto the Silau Silau, and we cut across back to HQ, so we could visit the Liwagu restaurant for lunch. A serve of roti canai and possibly the best banana fritters on the planet later, replete, we had to make some decisions about what to do with the rest of our day.

 

Brandon tries out my camera at lunch

We brought up the trail map on my phone and plotted a course along the lower Liwagu trail, up one of the smaller trails to a shelter, and back the long way round to HQ. We set off at a slow pace, birding our way, coming across a minuscule and adorable Bornean Stubtail by the river. As it was about 2pm and nothing much was happening bird-wise, we decided to cut loose from birding for a while and take the opportunity to explore some of the forest. We came to a small wooden bridge over a pretty forest stream, and leaving our bags out of sight in the undergrowth, set off up it. 

Exploring one of the many creeks on Mount Kinabalu

Eventually we returned to the trail and made our way up to the shelter - one of the simple wooden huts that dot the trails, offering a bit of respite after the inevitable preceding hill. Nothing much calling up there, either - so we came back down and joined the bottom of the huge Liwagu track, that runs essentially from Timpohon Gate to HQ. We didn’t get far. Our legs were too tired, and Brandon had spotted a way to get down to the river in the gully below, so down we went.

Panorama of a Mount Kinabalu stream

Tough gig this birding thing

The river turned out to be a good choice - a beautiful rushing mountain stream, clear as glass, flowing over smooth mossy rocks past wide pebbled beaches, rainforest forming a green wall either side. There were even birds down there, Bornean Flowerpeckers and Indigo Flycatchers made occasional forays out over the stream to hunt. Paradise. And we had it all to ourselves.

We hung about by the river for several hours, nearly until dusk, before regretfully deciding it was time to leave. We had to go back to HQ to buy some snack food for tomorrow’s repeat 3:30am start (skipping breakfast was getting old). We had just picked up a female White-browed Shortwing, and were making our way back onto the main path, when a ringing three-part call buzzed out from the forest ahead of us. Whitehead’s Broadbill.

We both scanned the forest, hardly daring to blink. No movement. No further calls. No response to playback.

We waited for twenty minutes to the tune of absolutely nothing, before deciding that Broadbills sucked. Time to go.

We had hardly gone thirty meters when “DNGG-BUZZZZZ-TINGGGGGG”

And there it was.

Swaying on a thin vine, a large bright glossy-green ball with a violet throat patch. Whitehead’s Broadbill was in the bag. It stuck around for a few minutes, bouncing bowerbird-like between the branches, before disappearing  into the trees.

Whitehead’s Trio: 2/3!!

I hadn't been this ecstatic in a while. Broadbills are such cool birds.

We left the park (the shop was closed, so it looked like another hungry morning for us) and went for an early dinner before returning to the resthouse. I went for my shower while Brandon ran back to the roadhouse, having had the bright idea of asking if they could pack us some sandwiches for our morning hike. He returned bearing two boxes.

Since I’d now seen both Laughing-thrush and Broadbill, I let him in on the secret to hot water. He was not amused.

February 1st (Monday)

Another early start, another starlight hike up to Timpohon Gate. This time I was starting to flag more often on the hill, although my leg muscles didn’t actually hurt as much as I expected they would. I needed to take more stops, but I felt fresher at the top.

Fresh is a good word to describe this morning, actually. Very fresh - downright cold, in fact. I had my jumper on, and still sought refuge in the deserted and dark toilet block before Timpohon Gate to get out of the wind. Brandon looked like he was regretting not bringing a jumper, not that he said anything (“We’re going to the tropics, aren’t we? I’ll be fine.” he had said when I suggested he pack a jumper). 

We hung around around at one of the shelters about 200m from the gate until sunrise then wandered slowly up the road. A car passed us and parked at the top, and three birders got out - the first we’ve come across in our trip so far. They saw us and waved. “Which one of you is Julian Teh?” called the guide. It turned out that he was CK Leong, a member of the Borneo Bird Club facebook page, who had noticed the post I had made at 4am that morning, describing some of the success we’d had so far on the mountain. We chatted for a little while, we mentioned we were up there for Everett’s Thrush and he gave the slightly bitter smile of someone who’s tried many times. “On the road, after 5 or 6am you have no chance really” he said. He was right, it would seem. No thrush for us.

 

Sunrise vista from the Timpohon Gate power station

They walked over into the power station to the far fence (ignoring the rather graphic sign, featuring a silhouette of a man being marched off by a guard with a rifle and “No admittance, authorised personnel only” plastered over it in various languages. The guy who had just arrived at the power station, a worker, ignored them. I thought I could hear a Whitehead’s Broadbill in there, so I wandered in too. Didn’t get marched off, but didn’t get more than a fleeting glimpse at the Broadbill either. I looked over at the others, they were all pointing and looking down their scopes at something. “They’ve got something” I said to Brandon, nodding in their direction. He shrugged. In birding it’s generally considered pretty rude to just hang around people who are guiding other birders, it’s a bit like freeloading. So we left them to it, and went down to the gate to eat our pre-packed sandwiches Brandon picked up from the roadhouse last night. A slice of cheese between two pieces of white bread, with a side garnish of chewy last-night’s chocolate cereal (seemingly the standard side-dish for sandwiches at any time of day at the roadhouse), so it was nothing fancy but perfectly adequate for a birding breakfast.

 

 Breakfast at Timpohon Gate

We walked over to the head of the Liwagu Trail, a 5.6km trail the leads from just below Timpohon Gate to within 500m of Park HQ (it connects with the Silau Silau which takes you the last stretch). On the way down the first stretch, a steep hillside, encountered quite a bit of birdlife - Red-breasted Partridges foraged in the undergrowth (although only I got a look at one, and even then only the head and neck poking above a log), small flocks of Eyebrowed Thrush were moving through, and the ever-present Chestnut-crested Yuhinas were putting on a show. We’ve probably seen more Yuhinas than any other species during our stay on Kinabalu. It takes a bit of the mystique out of finding the montane endemics when one of them is actually more common than the Tree Sparrows!

 

Eyebrowed Thrush

Not to worry though, we had a target list of montane specialists to find, and we heard the first one at the bottom of the hill: Sunda Cuckoo. It was calling loudly, seemingly right above us, for ages - Brandon was stubbornly waiting for it to show itself, but after 45 minutes of no bird (and not much other activity), I lost my patience and took off up the path, bumping into another of our targets, a family group of Mountain Wren-babbler. I was very pleased to run into these, as I was expecting all the Wren-babblers to be difficult to get a look at. These ones, though, were most obliging, allowing us close-range viewing for a few minutes as they scrabbled around, much like larger versions of our White-browed Scrubwrens back home.

After an hour, at last, the Cuckoo deigned to show itself - all I got was three seconds of binocular views, straining my neck to look directly above me at a very stripy undertail and belly, but it was all I needed. Nothing else has those stripes on a buff vent, so Sunda Cuckoo was crossed off the target list.

We made good progress down the trail to make up for lost time - we started the trail at roughly 7am, and in two and a half hours we’d moved less than 1km. Before the 3km mark we were once again halted, this time by something much more interesting than a cuckoo - a mixed feeding flock of Bornean Treepies, Chestnut-hooded Laughing-thrushes, and most excitingly, three Checker-throated Woodpeckers. None of the traditional black-and-white woodpecker plumage of Europe here, these birds are dressed to impress in moss green with crimson highlights on the wings, a neat stripy chin patch and a tufty yellow-tipped mohawk of a crest. We followed them until the flock disappeared uphill, melting into the forest as suddenly as they’d appeared.

We walked quite quickly from there, as it was getting into late morning and bird activity was slowing right down. A phrase that would suit a lot of days in the rainforest would be “There was very little excitement until there was a lot of excitement”. Not much happens for a long while, then out of nowhere, something excellent pops up and if you’re not paying attention you’ll miss it.

That last bit is key, because it’s exactly what happened about 1km from the end of the trail. We were walking along the exceedingly narrow path that followed the line of the ridge, with a steep hillside to the right and the Liwagu river on the left. We were both tired and wanting to get back to somewhere familiar, so we were paying more attention to our footing than the forest around us. I just happened to look over to my left between steps, and caught a bird in flight - bright red with cinnamon patches, a long trailing tail, like a flashy flying cross, arcing out from the forest and following the river upstream.

There was no doubt in my mind - there is only one bird in these forests that looks like that. Our biggest remaining target (ignoring the Thrush, which I’m not entirely convinced actually exists - I think it’s just a myth so the locals get to watch us all tramp up the mountain at 3am) for the montane forests, and the final bird in the legendary Whitehead’s Trio: Whitehead’s Trogon.

The moment I saw it I was running back along the path to Brandon calling “Trogon! TROGON!”  but by the time we managed to scramble down the steep slope to the river, the bird had utterly vanished. We searched the banks of the river for nearly an hour, but the bird was nowhere to be found. I had hoped it would still be visible - from all the literature, Trogons hunt by simply choosing a perch in a dark, damp gully, sitting there motionless all day, flying out every now and then to snap up an unfortunate insect or amphibian. Most people don’t see them unless they flush - which thankfully they do readily when disturbed. Josh had told me they usually flush about 5m, sit on a high perch and stare at you until you leave.

Not this bird though - he was gone. The mood was tense as we left the river after a prolonged search and continued up the trail, the karmic implications of the situation (given the whole Broadbill incident) not lost on either of us.

We planned to return to the riverbed to keep searching later in the afternoon - it was pressing 12:30 and we were hungry - but the exceptional luck we’d had with most of our other montane targets clung on today as well. I was in the lead as we walked through a particularly damp bit of forest, when a bright orange bird flushed not a meter from my feet and flew up to a perch at eye-level: the female Whitehead’s Trogon, a vision in apricot and ash, the orange back, tail, crown and cheeks forming neat patterns with the black wings, finely vermiculated with tiny white lines, pale ash-grey throat, black chin, and luminous steel-blue beak.

 

Female Whitehead's Trogon

Even with it sitting right there, because it sat so still and Brandon hadn’t seen it land, it took a few minutes for him to get onto it - when it eventually flushed out to grab an insect and return to the perch. Just goes to show how well a seemingly brightly-coloured bird can just melt into the forest. I certainly hadn’t seen it when I nearly stepped on it. Everything about the bird, apart from the colour of the plumage, is stealthy. It sits almost motionless, and what movements it does make are incredibly slow and deliberate. When it landed it was facing away from us, and as it had yet to decide if we posed a threat, it swiveled its head to stare at us - just the turning of the head took almost twenty seconds.

The Trogon sat for photos, and high-fives were exchanged: we had completed the set, three of East Malaysia’s hardest, most-wanted, infamous birds in three days. Not to mention the fabulous supporting cast of scarce and tricky-to-pin-down birds like Bald Laughing-thrush, Orange-backed Woodpecker and Fruithunter. We still had a few targets to see, but honestly, if we left the mountain that very minute, nobody could say we hadn’t done well. Josh and Max only saw the Trogon on Mount Kinabalu, getting onto the Spiderhunter in the Crocker Range at the very end of their trip, and missing the Broadbill entirely. We had a lot to be proud of.

We left the Trogon in peace, and moved on. Not ten minutes had passed before, whilst walking down a hill, I heard a faint yapping sound, looked up, and sitting there in the tree was a spectacular male Whitehead’s Broadbill, calling softly (much more quietly than I had anticipated). As my camera shutter went into overdrive, he turned his head and looked down at us, giving me a perfect view of the black facial markings only present on the male of the species. I looked through my photos later and realised that while I was concentrating on the male through the viewfinder, a female had actually flown through - visible as a green blur of wings in the corner of one frame.

 

Male Whitehead's Broadbill

I couldn’t have been happier. As the Broadbill took off into the forest, I had the biggest grin on my face, which remained well in place until we reached the uphill section of the Silau Silau trail near park HQ. Then it disappeared for sure. The uphill was murder on my legs, and just to top it off, the steps leading out to the road (just when you think you’ve finally made it) are a whopping 40 or 50cm high, with a flat top surface of just 20cm or so between each one. It takes every bit of energy you have left after climbing the mountain and descending on a forest trail to haul your sorry carcass up those four steps.

And then the road to the restaurant is uphill too.

We collapsed into chairs at the expensive Sutera restaurant - no way were we walking out to the roadhouse - at around 2:45pm, and consumed a heroic quantity of indian-style fried noodles.

As we ate, we discussed our cash situation: With roughly RM150 remaining each, it was clear that we’d need to find an ATM before moving on to Poring Hot Springs on the 4th. I had overheard in some other people’s conversation that there was an ATM in the town of Kundasang, roughly 5km away, but nobody I asked was sure of its existence. I figured, therefore, that our best bet was the much larger town of Ranau, some 20km from Kinabalu Park, where it appeared there were a few regional bank branches in operation. We walked down to the main gate to look for a taxi - given the taxis in KK had been RM30 from our backpackers to Tanjung Aru, I was expecting roughly RM30 for the 20km between here and Ranau. Not so - the going price was RM100 for a round trip. We decided to leave it and rethink our plans.

So far today we had not left the park, and having entered at 4am, had not paid the entry fee. If we were to leave and return in the evening to spotlight, we would have to pay the fee, so we decided to just hang around in the HQ area and relax until darkness fell. This we did, before it suddenly dawned on us that unless we wanted to pay another RM40 or so for a meal, we’d need to get down to the roadhouse before the kitchen closed at roughly 7:30pm. We calculated that a meal at the roadhouse plus the park entry fee was still cheaper than dinner inside the park, so out we went.

 Brandon and I at Kinabalu Park HQ

We returned in darkness, but decided to try turning left up the Kiau View trail before the main gate, spotlighting along that, then turning onto the Pandanus trail back to mid-HQ. Halfway up the Kiau View we ran into a New Zealand couple, out ‘tramping’ in the forest. We exchanged notes on what to look out for (I decided they’d be happier not knowing about the existence of the Kinabalu Pit Viper when they asked us if there were snakes around, so I just cautioned them to be careful where they put their hands), before overtaking them and continuing up the trail.

Other than a few errant bats, we saw nothing on the trails, and despite doing a bit of a walk around HQ after exiting the Pandanus trail, there were no Mountain Scops Owls or Collared Owlets to be heard, much less seen. A bit of a letdown after such an exceptional day’s birding, but no matter. I was exhausted, and after a quick shower, was asleep within five minutes of getting into bed.

February 2nd (Tuesday)

We had planned to be up at 4am to watch sunrise over the mountain from the lookout point in lower HQ, but during the night my phone ran out of battery meaning there was no alarm, so we woke at 5:30 instead. We hurried to get ready, and managed to get up to the lookout before dawn broke. We sat and watched sunrise, munching away on the precious snacks that we bought yesterday afternoon whilst waiting for a taxi - I’d been forcing myself not to open my coveted chocolate bar all afternoon and evening yesterday, and it was quite a struggle. I carefully snapped off two squares and put the rest in my bag for later).

We had now seen all three Whitehead’s birds (and I had had a fleeting view of Whitehead’s Pygmy Squirrel while looking for the Trogon in the river yesterday, taking my tally to 4 animals bearing the name), but we weren’t quite satisfied. A female Whitehead’s Trogon is cool and all, but she has nothing on a male. We decided that we would take a rest day from the hike to Timpohon Gate, and instead spend the morning searching the lower end of the Liwagu trail for more Trogons, before trying to catch a cheaper bus or taxi into Ranau around midday.

We set off up the trail, stopping every now and then to look at something, but adding nothing new to the list. After about a kilometer, Brandon suddenly stopped in his tracks and swore. Neither of us had seen it until just two meters away, but right there, on an exposed branch just above eye level, right over the middle of the track, sat a female Trogon. Just staring at us. Stealth incarnate.

Realising she had been spotted, she flushed further back along the trail - but by now I had picked up the sound of a second bird calling from the gully on my right, and a quick search revealed a second female sitting silently, watching us from the forest. I watched her through binoculars, but the sounds continued even though she kept her beak firmly shut. Somewhere, there was a third bird.

Another female flushed on the left hand side of the track, taking the count to three, before a flash of scarlet brought the invisible caller to light - finally, the male. And what a bird. The same cinnamon back, black wings with a fine filigree of barring, and the same tail (slightly more black feathering). From the back it doesn’t even look that different, but when it turns around you realise just how breathtaking the male is. The brightest, strongest scarlet I have ever laid eyes on (makes a Red-capped Robin or Scarlet Honeyeater look washed out) covers the head and belly of the bird, with a starkly contrasting black chin, and the same pale crescent of plumage across the chest as in the female, but this time with a lavender wash applied over the ash-grey. Absolutely mesmerising.

Male (above) and female (below) Whitehead's Trogons
 

He clearly had things other than us on his mind, and didn’t stick around for many photos (and, sadly, none front-on). He was far more interested in his harem of females, taking off to chase them around the forest, uttering a buzzing trill as he flew. He drove the girls higher up the hill and together they vanished into the undergrowth.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

We walked back up to HQ in a great state of elation, stopping on the way to admire a handsomely pied Bornean Forktail in the Silau river. As we reached the Death Steps, a buffy flash alerted me to the presence of a Ferruginous Flycatcher, a rare migrant to the North-West of Borneo, and one I had not been expecting to encounter. Our excellent morning just got even better.

We walked out of the front gate and down to the main road. Seeing us, a man jumped out of a van pulled up opposite, and asked us if we were looking for transport. We asked how much to Ranau, and he said RM40 each way, so we decided to bite the bullet and jumped in. I wish our minibus from KK to Kinabalu Park had been this nice - the van was clearly quite new and well looked-after, and best of all, the air-conditioning worked an absolute treat.

The road to Ranau cuts a twisting and winding path through the mountains, and although it’s only 20km, it feels a lot longer due to road conditions and traffic (heavy trucks full of wood and building materials lead convoys of cars unable to overtake them). We eventually pulled up in Ranau, our driver taking us virtually to the front door of the bank. We went in, and after a short wait to use the ATM, thankfully had no problems in withdrawing RM1000 (roughly AUD400) to last us (at the very least) until Lahad Datu and Danum Valley. Our van driver was waiting for us, so we didn’t go exploring in Ranau.

 

The Big Wombok, Ranau

Back at Kinabalu Park we decided to walk down the main road - the road between KK and Ranau - for about a kilometer to a tiny side-road up to some buildings, which Josh had tipped us off for being a very occasional site for two birds. The first, Bornean Barbet, is a submontane endemic which is only reliable in the Crocker Range, but occasionally moves north to Kinabalu’s lower slopes. The other, Pygmy Ibon (a.k.a. Pygmy White-eye, a distant relative of our Silvereyes) is more common in Kinabalu Park, but due to its tiny size and scarcity, is generally difficult to get a look at. We walked up, noting lots of bird activity, but none of our targets, before the mist turned to steady light rain, the first we’ve encountered on our trip.

I didn’t have my rain jacket and was in a very light button-up t-shirt, so I wasn’t keen to hang around, but Brandon was more determined. The rain did do one good thing - it brought out some of Kinabalu’s lesser-seen residents. A movement up the road turned out to be a large and disapproving-looking Montane Horned Frog, an incredibly cool looking beastie, and the one amphibian I was really hoping to stumble into on this trip (not that I had any idea where or how to look for one).

 

Montane Horned Frog (Megophrys kobayashii)

I got sick of being rained on, so I walked back to the resthouse, Brandon not too far behind (he said he got Bornean Spiderhunter on the road down). 

Tomorrow is our final full day on Kinabalu, and yes, we’re spending it walking up to Timpohon Gate in the dark, to stake out Everett’s bloody Thrush. Not that it exists.

 February 3rd (Wednesday)

 Our last day on Mount Kinabalu.

It was actually a really nice day in general - although the walk up to Timpohon Gate was starting to wear a little thin on charm. We kept our ears open along the way, but as ever, no sound of Collared Owlet or Bornean Frogmouth (the latter incredibly rare, but you never know your luck in the big forest). The only birds calling were Mountain Scops Owls, and as we’ve learned over the last week, they either ignore or fly away from recordings being played.

No Everett’s Thrush this morning. Because it doesn’t exist.

When dawn broke properly, we went and hung around in a small patch of trees directly behind the power station (we started inside the fence then worked our way around the outside. The worker in there just ignored us). The little grove of trees harboured what appears to be the only patch of short lawn-grass on the mountain away from park HQ, and the birds seemed to gather around it. Most noticeable were the passage migrants - we had Blue-and-white Flycatchers, Asian Brown Flycatchers, Mugimaki Flycatchers, Barn Swallows and Grey Wagtails within a short space of time, along with various local species such as incredibly confiding Indigo Flycatchers (officially my new second-favourite bird after Whitehead’s Broadbill), Chestnut-crested Yuhinas, Bornean Whistling-thrushes, Bornean Whistler and Sunda Bush-warblers. We even managed to connect with one of our major montane targets, Mountain Black-eye, at long last. Phillips & Phillips says that they are ‘the commonest bird at higher altitudes on Mount Kinabalu”. We only saw one.

Bornean Whistler

 Indigo Flycatcher

Despite this activity, there was no sign of our real target for the morning - which reminds me that I completely forgot to write about that incident, even though I set myself up for the explanation. Allow me to digress back in time.

I wrote the day before yesterday that we ran into CK Leong guiding a pair of Europeans around the Timpohon Gate and power station, and that we had left them alone in accordance with birding etiquette. As we were walking up the road to the restaurant after our big Liwagu trail walk in the afternoon, CK drove past us and pulled up. “We were looking for you earlier” he called. “We had Siberian Rubythroat up at the power station”.

Agh. Siberian Rubythroats are, in my opinion, one of the world’s best looking birds. Even though they’re not unheard of in Borneo (one or two come to the mountain on migration most years) I still would have loved to have seen one. Rubythroat was our main target for the morning - but as I said, no sign. A real pity, as they’re absolute gems of birds, but I can at least console myself with the fact that they’re common elsewhere in the world. Unlike Mountain Black-eye.

After a while at the power station, we walked around the corner to the desk at Timpohon Gate in search of breakfast. Not a real breakfast, of course, for that we would have needed to do the 1.5 hour walk all the way back to HQ. But there’s a tiny shop in the gate which we had heard sold snack food, so we figured that would do. Turns out 90% of what they sold was chocolate or chocolate-coated (good energy food for the mountain climbers, I suppose).

After our chocolate we did another hour at the power station, not really noting anything new apart from a couple of Pale-faced Bulbuls and an unidentified squirrel.

We walked back down the mountain, taking it easy and keeping an eye out for Kinabalu Serpent Eagles (the rapidly descending mist made chances of that slim at best). We stopped at the Sutera restaurant for lunch, before walking back down the main road to the 1km turnoff to have another (unsuccessful) crack at Spiderhunter. We did pick up Yellow-bellied Prinia on the way though, so the walk wasn’t for nothing. By this time my camera battery had finally used up its last dregs of charge - impressive, given I hadn’t charged it since the night before we left home - so we returned to the resthouse, with the intentions of sitting down to charge batteries and write a few lists before heading out again to photograph the waterfalls on the Liwagu River.

Three hours later, I woke up. Brandon was still asleep.

When he eventually woke up, we decided we couldn’t be bothered walking all the way to the falls as it would be mostly dark by the time we arrived. Instead I did some quick photo editing, then we went for dinner.

View from the balcony of the Mountain Resthouse

Airing the clothes after 7 days birding

 Awesome Brahmid Moth on the wall of our room

We went spotlighting along the Silau Silau creek tonight, finding two new species of frog (no idea what they are), and though we had a Mountain Scops calling quite close by, it refused to show itself before eventually flying off down the valley.

My clothes are all rolled up, most of my belongings have been sorted out, and tomorrow we leave for Poring Hot Springs. Hopefully it doesn’t take us too long to flag down a passing minibus on its way there - could take a few hours (or all day). Fingers crossed.

 

 Sunset over Park HQ

 February 4th (Thursday)

This is gonna be a quick entry because I need to shut down my laptop ASAP. I’ll explain why in a second.

We awoke this morning at around 6 (“I think I’ve forgotten how to sleep in”, Brandon groaned from the other bed) and just lay about dozing for a few hours before eventually getting up and finishing off our packing.

We were ready to go by about 9, and set off up to the pull-in in front of the park gate, where we hoped to flag down a minibus going to Poring Hot Springs. Thankfully the wait wasn’t too long, as a taxi driver approached us, and after some bargaining, agreed to do the trip for RM60. It was quite a long ride, as you have to go all the way to Ranau before you get to the Poring turnoff, and further from there.

We arrived intact (road lines, it seems, are more guidelines than rules up here) and set about checking into our home for the next two nights, a twin-share room at the Sutera Lodges-run resort at Poring. We had to pay up to stay there, as the park gates only open at 8am and staying outside the gates would make birding very impractical.

Our room looked very nice, more like a hotel than anything else we’d seen so far. But we didn’t stick around to enjoy it, there was birding to be done. We grabbed the essentials and headed for the hills - literally. Poring Hot Springs has pretty much just one trail, the Langanan Waterfall trail, which is a 3km walk. Josh had warned in his trip report that the trail “has a steep 40% gradient for the first 2km, after which it flattens out and becomes quite a pleasant walk to the waterfall”. I reckoned I could handle the 2km - I’d just done Kinabalu HQ to Timpohon Gate 4 times - how bad could it be?

I don’t think, in my entire life, combined, I have lost as much water in sweat as today.

Poring is submontane, and at just ~500m above sea level, much hotter than Mount Kinabalu (where the HQ is well above 1000m). Hot and humid. The waterfall trail starts about 500m from the accommodation, and to get to the trailhead you have to pass the hot springs (just before which we picked up a pair of Scaly-breasted Bulbuls, arguably the prettiest of the Bulbuls in Sabah, and one I had been really hoping to see). The hot springs are the reason why most people come to Poring - there are both indoor and outdoor pools (the indoor ones cost more), and despite the comments on TripAdvisor, they actually look alright, and fairly clean. Still, our thoughts of a nice dip were quickly banished when we were hit by the smell. The hot springs here are sulphurous, so the slightest breeze fills the entire downwind area with the stench of rotten eggs. Sore muscles aren’t worth putting your face near that. Not to me, anyway.

To access the start of the trail you have to cross a river. If this was Mount Kinabalu there would be a bridge. Not here. Thankfully the rocks in this river are a lot less slippery than on the mountain, and we made it across all bones intact, and even with dry feet.

Dry in the sense that I didn’t step in the river. Everything about me was wet by this point. And we hadn’t even started climbing.

The initial climb was ridiculously steep, hot, sticky, and generally birdless. Not a great start. Nevertheless we persevered, savouring the ever-so-slight reduction in temperature that came with the rise in elevation on the hillside. Thankfully also the first part of the walk is mostly shaded, the value of which became apparent when we stepped into an open patch of sunlight and the steady stream running from my hairline became a waterfall to rival Langanan itself. The worst part was that there was a Sunbird nest which we noticed, only visible from a position in full sun. We had to stand there until the owners showed themselves for identification (they ended up being Red-throated Sunbirds).

Continuing, the trail continued to climb as finally we started to run into some birds - Little Spiderhunter, Hairy-backed Bulbul, Puff-backed Bulbul and a few species we’d already found on the mountain. Bulbuls and Babblers are not really found in the true mountains (save a few species), but from now on we enter the heart of their habitat.

Another open patch yielded a Blyth’s Hawk-eagle, my first raptor of the trip. Blyth’s Hawk-eagle is a looker, with handsomely pied plumage. We birded up to around the 2km mark before discovering that Josh is a liar. The bit of the trail that “flattens out and becomes quite pleasant” lasts for perhaps 100m, before continuing to climb - only this time steeper and far more slippery. Everything is slippery. Especially rocks and tree-roots, of which there are plenty, many half-buried in the leaf litter. It’s a miracle neither of us were injured, we certainly slid out-of-control down the hill enough times. The trail continues to climb, aside from a very brief downhill section, right until the waterfall.

“Woah, cool,” I said as we reached it. It was a very pretty waterfall, not much to shout about though really, although it was a bit bigger than anything we saw in Kinabalu Park.

And then I realised the trail continued.

We made our way carefully up the slope, and went around one more corner.

“WOAH.”

 

 Langanan Waterfall

That other waterfall looks a bit like pouring water out of a bucket when you see this.

The great torrent of white water pouring down the cliff face gave me an ideal opportunity for something I was badly in need of - a shower. I took off my shirt and stood in the spray for a good long while, which was beautifully cool and infinitely more refreshing than splashing stream-water on my face, which I did whenever possible on the hike up (I splashed water on my shirt too - pretty sure it got drier).

Brandon - before he'd even started splashing water on himself

Although the waterfall was basically paradise, there was the small matter of getting back to the hot springs before dark, and we were forced to leave sooner than I would have liked. After two hours of slipping down hills, near-death experiences and a couple of birds (the best of which was Rufous Piculet - a diminutive and adorable member of the Woodpecker family, just 10cm long, and seen only by me) we arrived just as dusk was falling.

After a quick shower (the bathrooms here are definitely the best we’ve had all trip, I am unaccustomed to such luxury on a birding trip) we went for dinner. When we left, we left one light on inside, and the porch light.

Big.

Mistake.

We enjoyed a lovely dinner (Sutera restaurant, so I wasted no time in indulging my roti canai addiction while I had the opportunity) and returned to our room, noting on the way the swarms of insects surrounding the lights on the bridge. The local bats were having a field day, all they had to do was fly past with their mouth open and they were set for the night. It didn’t occur to us that the doors in our cabins might not be very well sealed against such an onslaught. When we opened the door, the scene that greeted us was like some entomophobe’s worst nightmare. Insects covered everything. Walls, floor, beds, every available surface. The Asian House-gecko in the corner looked terrified.

We went to reception to see if they had a broom we could use, and on seeing the scale of the invasion, they promptly moved us to the room next door, where we made sure to keep the lights off, getting around using the glow from our phone’s screens, daring not to use our flashlight apps let alone our actual flashlights. 

Which brings me to why this entry is short. The glow from my laptop screen is already beginning to attract some of the sneakier local bugs, and I have to shut it down before the rest of them outside notice.

Birding Sabah - Part 1

The following is a series of daily diary-entries from a month-long birding trip fellow young-birder Brandon Hewitt and I undertook in Sabah, Borneo, during February 2016.

For anyone who has come to this page looking for a brief "went here, saw this" report, you've come to the wrong place! However just such a version of this trip report will be up on cloudbirders.com soon, and I will provide a link to it in part 2 of this post.

Before I begin, I'll give you a quick introduction to the major players in this piece:

Brandon Hewitt - a Bundaberg birder a few months older than me, quiet, reserved, generally stealthy and my travel companion for this trip. Check out his birding blog HERE:

Josh Bergmark - A Sydney young birder, who provided me with invaluable help setting up this whole trip, as well as advice and support over the course of our journey. Check out the birding blog he shares with Max Breckenridge HERE

If ,after reading this (and the following) posts, you have any questions about birds we saw, places we visited or just generally about birding in Sabah, feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to get back to you ASAP :)

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January 25th (Monday)

Brandon arrived at our house in Canberra last night from his home in Bundaberg, so this morning we drafted mum into taking us birding. We got up at 5, left at 5:20, and were in Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve by 6, only to discover the road only opens at 7:30 - great. We hung about for an hour (hearing, but not seeing, Diamond Firetail) before being let in by the ranger at about 7:10.

We made our way down to the Lyrebird trail and did the 2km walk, finding Pilotbird (a nice and long-overdue lifer, and a decent ACT tick), and a couple of other new birds for Brandon like Crescent Honeyeater. The trail’s namesake, though audibly present, elected not to show for us.

We moved on to Black Flats because mum wanted to look for Platypus, and quickly picked up a feeding pair of Crested Shrike-tits, a very welcome addition to both ACT and year list. I’d only ever seen them twice before, both times in Victoria - once in July 2012, when Huib Ottow and I found one in Sherbrooke State Forest, and once in November 2013 when one briefly fed in the trees outside my accommodation in “the bush hut” at Healesville Sanctuary.

Walking further on to the dams, we did actually manage great views of a single Platypus, feeding in a dam, unconcerned by our presence and popping up regularly to the surface for air.

During the afternoon we did the rounds of town, picking up last minute additions to the packing list as well as essentials like malaria tablets and Malaysian currency (I love having inches of money). This evening was mostly spent packing. Big day ahead, tomorrow!

A flattering image of me, chasing Pilotbirds in Tidbinbilla - Photo courtesy of Brandon Hewitt

 January 26th (Tuesday)

Got up, showered, ate, and spent the rest of the morning finishing my packing, pretty much right up to 12:15 when we had to leave for the Murrays bus to Sydney. An arduous bus ride as always, but somewhat shorter than normal thanks to disembarking at Sydney International Airport rather than continuing through to Central Station.

Brandon (left) and myself on the bus to Sydney

Once inside the airport, we checked our bags and got our boarding passes - the woman on the check-in desk finalised our seats with us, and got us into a spot where there were just two seats together, which was excellent on an aircraft where the seats were normally in threes. Not that we need have worried really, the flight turned out to be rather sparsely populated. The perks of flying on Australia Day.

We hung around in the departure lounge, Brandon taking time lapses with his GoPro, until at last we boarded and took off around 7:10pm.

Singapore Airlines is damn good. I’ll definitely be looking at them first if I’m back up this way anytime soon. Fairly roomy (for economy) seats, excellent passenger service, free food and soft drinks/juice (food left a bit to be desired, but hey, it’s an aircraft), entertainment system, the works. Pillows and blankets, even.

Pure luxury!

The flight was a long one. I got about 3/4 of the way through Captain America 1 before being interrupted by food, then spent a while trying to sleep (mostly unsuccessfully). It was very annoying, usually I’m able to sleep just about anywhere, but for some reason today I just wasn’t drifting off. Still, just laying around (the part of the cabin we were in had several unoccupied rows, which we appropriated for snoozing) with my eyes closed has hopefully given me a bit of a boost from resting my brain.

After seven hours we began our descent into Singapore. We arrived in Changi airport and walked all the way down to the end of terminal 3, because the sign said the SkyTrain between terminals was inoperative between 11:30pm and 5am. When we got to the end, we realised this wasn’t actually the case, and at roughly midnight we caught the SkyTrain across to terminal 2. We did a lap of the terminal (which is enormous, as expected) before finding a reasonably quiet corner to bunker down for the next 7 hours before our connecting flight to Kota Kinabalu.
 

January 27th (Wednesday)

Those 7 hours dragged on forever.

We eventually moved downstairs to the lower part of the terminal - about 3:30am, I think - and pretty much just wandered around for a while before settling in next to our gate (which had finally been allocated). It was a lot warmer down there, and I actually slept comfortably for around an hour and a half. After what seemed like an eternity (but was actually the half-hour between 7:30 and 8am) the gate finally opened and we went inside, going through the usual security checks (first time I’ve needed to take my boots off going through the scanners). It didn’t take long before they started to call us for boarding, and after having our passports examined and boarding passes scribbled on, we were all crammed into a bus and taken out onto the runway to meet the plane - a small Airbus A320 - that would take us on the final leg of the journey to the start point of our trip: Kota Kinabalu, on the west coast of Sabah.

We sat aboard the plane for a short while, noting Cattle Egrets and (probably) Pacific Swallows on the runway, before taking off.

The flight from Singapore to KK was about 2.5 hours, most of which I spent between watching the second Captain America movie (having finished the first one in Changi Airport) and doing some final reading of my field guide in prep for landing.

Boning up on ID points in preparation for landing

We disembarked the plane and were ushered into the terminal, straight into the arms of the customs and immigration officers. Something was strange about the terminal though - it took me a while to put my finger on it, but once I realised, it was obvious. It was nearly silent. Other than the murmurs of the passengers of our plane, there was almost nobody in that part of the terminal, and no announcements over the PA. I’ve never been in an airport so quiet. We reclaimed our luggage without issue, and after a quick mid-terminal repacking session to make my loads a bit easier to handle, we walked out into the entrance hall of the airport. Here, conveniently, there were stalls for both Digi and another (I forget the name of the network) cell carriers, where we could buy sim cards for our phones. We went with Digi as I’d done some research before coming and the map of coverage seemed decent. Fingers crossed it holds up. We managed to get 3gb of data, lasting a month, for RM40.

We went to get a taxi to our backpackers, and soon found that to catch a taxi from KK airport you first have to visit the desk inside and buy a little voucher thing. That covers the cost of the ride, and you give it to the driver instead of cash. I think the understanding is they then go and redeem the voucher later to get paid. A nice little system I thought, to stop unscrupulous taxi drivers from ripping off new arrivals.

We arrived at our base for the next two nights, Borneo Backpackers, and checked in for the first night, before heading off for a bit of a scout-about to pin down some of KK’s common city birds. We started by walking to the city waterfront (stopping for the first time, of many to come I’m certain, at a multi-bake - a popular chain of bakeries). Arriving by the waterside we had Great Egrets flying past, Zebra Doves and Asian Glossy Starlings in the trees above us, and a dark-morph Pacific Reef-Egret (a bogey for me back home) casually fishing off the rocks a few meters away.

We sat there and ate our lunch, with the obligatory side of malaria prophylaxis, before zig-zagging back to the other side of town (not a long walk as this area of KK is long and thin) to check out Signal Hill. A set of stairs leading up into the forest looked promising, so up we went, spending quite a while on the hillside waiting for birds to appear.

A minuscule Sunbird of some description (probably a female Olive-backed, but we aren’t sure) put in an appearance, followed by Pink-necked Green Pigeon. I only got the bum-view as it sat very high in a tree, so I probably won’t tick that yet. I should get it tomorrow. Ashy Tailorbirds and a Grey-streaked Flycatcher (which Brandon picked up but I missed, again nothing to stress about) were working the forest edge higher up, and a variety of swifts were hawking above the canopy - we picked out Asian Palm and House Swifts, along with tiny, sparkling Glossy Swiftlets. 

Panorama from the Signal Hill lookout

We reached the lookout and cafe and stopped for a while to catch our breath and ponder our movements for the next day or two. I wasn’t overly charmed by our day in KK, and thus am pretty keen to head for Mount Kinabalu as soon as possible. After some discussion, we decided to play tomorrow by ear - we’ll bird some sites in KK in the morning (Tanjung Aru beach and the KK Wetland Centre), and if we can make it back by around 12, we’ll head down to Padang Merdeka and from there catch the bus up to Mount K. If it looks like we’re not going to make it back in time, we’ll not stress and continue to the mountain the day after tomorrow as originally planned.

The view of the city skyline (complete with close fly-bys from Glossy Swiftlets) was rather nice, but lack of sleep was making me irritable so we headed back down to relax at the backpackers for a while. On the way down I stopped to investigate a chirping in the low, scrubby bushes. Brandon didn’t, and I think he now regrets it, for a flash of bright scarlet heralded the almost simultaneous arrival and disappearance of a male Eastern Crimson Sunbird. I managed to get my bins on him just as he appeared, so I was briefly able to admire his glowing plumage, decked out with fine blue moustachial stripes before he was off. We hung around for a while, but he didn’t reappear, so we left Signal Hill.

We chilled out in our dorm at the backpackers for perhaps an hour (I was relishing the fact that the bed I had chosen happened to be the closest to the air-con unit), just relaxing and dozing. Sufficiently relaxed, and dusk approaching, we set off on another foray into town in search of dinner. Josh (a birding friend who did a Sabah trip in 2014 which formed the basis for our route) had sent me a message saying “check out the markets on the waterfront” so we started there. All manner of piscine ex-life-forms were lined up on display, flies buzzing around those whose stall-owners hadn’t the foresight to station someone with a switch to flick them off. Fish, plain and colourful (I’m bad with fish but I recognised a few species of Parrot-fish), gawked at us (either raw or char-grilled whole), along with huge shrimp and a dazzling variety of ever-spikier crustaceans.

The biggest fish of all

Though interesting from a biological standpoint, my stomach wasn’t really rising to the thought of a whole grilled fish. So we moved on, walking through the streets and checking out the KK Plaza (which didn’t have anything food-related other than supermarkets). By this time it was getting dark and we needed to find food, so we bowed to western pressure and went to the fast-food place across the street from where we happened to be. We’ll try more interesting food when we have the time to explore properly. Honest.

January 28th (Thursday)

I awoke this morning feeling generally less annoyed, tired, hot and sweaty. Surprising, since I woke at about 6am - the pros of going to sleep before 10pm right there.

Loathe though I was to leave the sanctuary of my air-conditioned bunk, I dragged myself up so that we could head out for some early-morning birding. Our first destination was the little supermarket we stopped at yesterday so that I could buy some water (I’d finished the 1.5L bottle I bought yesterday afternoon). Unfortunately the market was closed, as was pretty much everything else in the vicinity. I figured that, as Tanjung Aru is where all the rich people go to stay at the expensive Sutera Harbour lodge, I’d be able to get some water somewhere down there. So we caught a taxi down.

The driver dropped us right on the beach and we got down to business - a Striated Heron was fishing a few meters away, right out in the open on a little salt-water inlet. I got down to try and get some photos, as it was sitting in nice light, but it saw me coming from miles off and retreated to the safety of a nearby tree. Not to worry, other birds were there to be seen: Common Ioras were feeding in a casuarina above where we were standing. We sauntered down the beachfront, basically kicking Tree Sparrows and Spotted Doves out of the way, before a big movement and a flash of black and white caught my attention in a casuarina further down.

“Hornbill!!!!!”

Two Oriental Pied Hornbills were jumping about the tree, an adult and a juvenile judging by the much-diminished casque on one of them. They moved through the tree in great leaps, not bothering to flap but opening their wings presumably for stability. They moved out into the open to eye us warily, before leaping off deeper into the tree and out of sight. 

Oriental Pied Hornbills

We continued down the beach, stopping to pick up a Common Sandpiper feeding in a drain, and arrived in a small park. Stopping to check the Egrets strolling around for Chinese (No luck - all Cattle and Intermediate), we realised that sitting down for a while would probably be worthwhile, as there was quite a lot of activity in the surrounding casuarinas and pandanus vegetation. Yellow-vented Bulbuls, Asian Glossy Starlings and more Common Ioras put in appearances, as did a number of minuscule Sunbirds, which refused to come down out of the canopy for identification. None appeared to be males, so making a life-ticking call on a 9cm brown bird moving quickly around the top of a big tree wasn’t really an option.

I finally got a look - a great look, actually - at a pair of Pink-necked Green Pigeons, sitting on some bare branches high up in a tree. The male was putting a lot of effort into his display, and was being received, as with all pigeon species, with a vacant-eyed stare of general disinterest. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a female pigeon look impressed by anything. Being a male pigeon must be so disheartening.

We moved still further up the beach, heading towards a group of Terns roosting out on a sandspit. As we walked up, we unintentionally flushed a small flock of Plovers - most annoying as we had been planning to check any groups of plovers we came across for our target species, Malaysian. We managed to get a look at the birds in flight, and are fairly confident all were either Greater or Lesser Sand-plovers. Malaysian will have to wait for another day. We have sites for it further south in KK (Lok Kawi Beach) and also in Singapore, a beach next to Changi Airport, which we might be able to visit during our 10-hour stopover on the way home.

We stopped to look at the Terns (most or all Greater Crested, not even a year tick) but by this time the sun was edging higher into the sky, and the salty waterfall that was my face was beginning to flow freely. I made my way over towards the beautifully shady looking grass on the waterfront, but as I got there realised that it was part of the Sutera Harbour resort and going and sitting in there would probably be trespassing (later confirmed by the security guards wandering around). I made do with a patch of shady concrete.

Brandon joined me, and after picking out a pair of Grey Imperial-pigeons sitting way up in a tree, we set off to find some water. 

Panorama of Tanjung Aru beach

It was quite a long walk to the nearest shop - I had made the fatal miscalculation of thinking there would be shops near the rich people, when in fact the rich people get all their food at the hotel - and by the time we reached the 7-11 I was just about ready to skull another 1.5L bottle. I won’t be going out in the morning without having (or knowing exactly where I can get) water again.
Suitably refreshed, we took a taxi back into town - we were trying to get to the KK Wetland Centre, but the driver didn’t know where it was, and didn’t speak English well enough to understand our attempts to direct him. Luckily the first taxi driver we found once back in the city knew where we were going, and took us straight there, agreeing to return as quickly as possible when we called him.

The KK Wetland Centre is quite an interesting place - a large swathe of mangrove forest, maintained by Sabah Parks. Normally such forest is impassable after the first few meters due to the nature of mangrove mud (as past experiences in Darwin had taught me), but the Parks division had had the bright idea of putting out nearly 2km of boardwalks, hides and even a canopy tower for visitors. As such they do ask an entry fee, the modest sum of RM10 (roughly AUD$3). They do their job very well too - the boardwalks, though understandably not of Australian wetland quality - are nicely maintained, and signs are posted in every little hut warning “Don’t litter, it will make your life bitter” or one of a variety of other anti-littering slogans. Despite this, the mud was adorned in many places with the plastic remains of past visitors.

We walked the boardwalks slowly for about 3/4 of an hour before settling into the hide overlooking a colony of Purple Herons. At first I thought they must all have left to avoid the heat of the day, as all I could see was a large group of Pacific Golden Plovers bathing in the shallow water. I scanned the low vegetation on the far side for Striated Grassbirds (finding one) before noticing a large stripy head staring back at me. Suddenly everywhere I looked there were Purple Herons, camouflaging neatly into the long grasses.

Highlight of the stop though was a minuscule Common Kingfisher, pale apricot contrasting with shockingly bright sky-blue. Common Kingy is a migrant, and one I wasn’t at all confident we’d get, so finding such an obliging bird so early in the trip was a big bonus.

 

Common Kingfisher

After a quick detour to the canopy tower (it was getting towards midday, so no activity other than a swiftly-passing Green Imperial Pigeon) we went back to the office and filled out the guestbook. I suspect the lady at the desk noticed when I signed in that we were from Australia, because she asked to take a photo of us for their newsletter.

We managed to squeeze in one last lifer just as our taxi pulled up - Orange-bellied Flowerpecker, a tiny and beautiful slate-grey and orange bird, the first we had seen of that family.

We returned to the backpackers. It was hot, humid, the city was starting to become malodorous again (it had actually smelled quite nice when we got back from Tg. Aru, a result of every second store firing up their grills), and we were done with the city. We had intended to stay for the rest of the day, but we were impatient. It was time to go. We packed up our things and walked down to Padang Merdeka, one of the city’s major bus stations. A driver spotted us (looking very touristy with our big bags on), and on being informed that we wanted go to Kinabalu Park, pointed us to the right minibus. We loaded our gear and waited - the buses to Ranau (the town just beyond Mount Kinabalu NP) only leave when full, so we were prepared to have to wait a while. Thankfully it was only half an hour or so until a couple more people showed up and the driver decided he had enough of a fare to make the trip.

We rolled out of KK and headed towards the hills - at which point I fell into a much-needed slumber. The van was loud and the ancient air-conditioning clearly not designed for the tropics (neither were the black leather seats), but the windows were open and the promise of our destination meant spirits were reasonably high.

I awoke in the mountains, the twisting roads edged by montane forest, interspersed with random houses (some nice, others little more than wooden shells). A bit of activity and a brief increase in roadside buildings as we drove through the town of Kabalu signaled that we were almost there, and as we rounded a corner, there it was. Mount Kinabalu.

Easily the most massive thing I have ever laid eyes on - I mean, obviously mountains are going to be big, but Kinabalu, even from a distance, is bigger than big. Bigger than huge. Only such well-rounded words as ‘leviathan’ and ‘colossal’ come close. Sheer faces swathed in greenery, interspersed by huge grey areas of granite, probably cleared by the landslides in last year’s earthquake.

It was more than a little daunting.

We pulled up at the entrance to the park and had to ask a few people before finally being pointed towards our accommodation for the next 7 nights, the charming and comfortable-in-a-basic-way Mountain Resthouse. Situated ~300m from the park gates, this is the closest one can stay to the park without actually being inside it, property that is all owned by Sutera and thus costing more than our entire trip budget. 

Arrival at Mount Kinabalu Park Headquarters

We did some light birding around the resthouse, picking up such fun montane endemics as Temminck’s Sunbird, the mountain cousin of Eastern Crimson and similarly breathtaking in scarlet and white, Little Pied Flycatcher and Mountain Tailorbird, before setting off on a walk up around park HQ.

It was around 5:30 at this stage, and we knew it would soon be dark, so we decided not to attempt any trails, but rather just check out the area around HQ. Our plans were pretty much halted after about 100m, as we turned a corner, and there was a spectacular view of Kinabalu’s barren peak. A view that only got better over the next half hour, as the light grew pinker and a strong rainbow spontaneously erupted on the mountainside. Two mini-busloads of tourists returning to the park for the night pulled up and joined us in gaping, awestruck, at the scale of the sunset spectacle. We chatted with a few of them (as they asked us to pose with them for photos with a mountain backdrop), turns out they had come over from Peninsular Malaysia on a filing and record-keeping course. Interesting place to run it, but I don’t think they were complaining!

Stages of a breathtaking Mount Kinabalu sunset

As the sun dipped below the treeline we made our way back along the dark roads, stopping to admire a Bornean Whistling Thrush and send a few emails. 3G and reception is good around HQ, but non-existent a few hundred meters down the road here at the resthouse, which is annoying.

We ate dinner at the 'Restoran Panatoran' outside the park gates, and returned to the resthouse in anticipation of our first morning on the mountain-slopes.

January 29th (Friday)

We started out early this morning - not as early as planned, perhaps, but 6am. Already pretty light by then.

We went straight into the park, and decided on the Liwagu trail to start off the day. We followed the road around the back of the buffet restaurant, down the steep slope before pulling up abruptly - something black and white was moving around at the base of a bamboo clump a few meters away.

“Fantail!” I whispered. Brandon already had his bins up. “Nah - Forktail!”

It was indeed a Forktail, one of those strange river-loving birds, quite different to anything we have in Australia. Long and thin, with an elongated tail and curiously flat, sloped forehead, pied plumage and odd, slightly eerie, pale legs. There are two very similar species in Borneo (and a third quite distinct one), Bornean and White-crowned. Both look essentially identical, the tail of White-crowned being slightly shorter. Thankfully there is an easy way to distinguish the two - altitude. Bornean Forktail, which was once lumped with White-crowned before being split off as a Bornean endemic, lives only in the very high altitude areas of the country: Kinabalu and some peaks in the Crocker Range. White-crowned on the other hand is submontane and lowland, taking over from Bornean as you get further down the slopes.

As we were in Kinabalu Park, it was a safe bet that this was Bornean - a good tick to start the day! A strange one, too. Forktails are aquatic birds, that spend most of their time hawking along forest streams, extremely wary of people. This one was foraging some distance from the nearest stream (which, incidentally, was where we were heading), instead choosing some churned up mud beside buildings, and seemingly unperturbed by our presence.

We walked down a tiny side-trail (finding an adorable and minuscule Mountain Tailorbird on the way) between two roads before reaching the entrance to the Liwagu trail. We hadn’t gone far before we came across our first ‘bird wave’. Kinabalu works in interesting ways - it is one of the prime birding sites in Sabah (and easily the best montane habitat around), but the forests are often devoid of birds. You can (and we did, later) walk for hours and see nothing. The reason for this has to do with the way the birds move - they form small flocks of mixed species, and move around the forest as groups, often in the company of small mammals like Squirrels and Tree-shrews. Because of the way these groups move (certain species will lead the pack, others follow with still others bringing up the rear), people tend to call them bird ‘waves’.

This wave was small, but had some nice birds in it - Yellow-breasted Warblers, White-throated Fantails and Indigo Flycatchers. Nothing too small, indistinct or fast-moving, a good way to ease into the way birding works up here.

We moved along the trail, picking up Ochraceous Bulbuls and Grey-chinned Minivets, before turning off the Liwagu trail onto the Bundu Tuhan View Trail. This was quite a long trail, and it took us some time to reach the top - the lookout presenting a nice view of the surrounding hills and scattered settlements. More interesting was the vegetation. Kinabalu has an incredible diversity of plants - I forget how many are endemic to the mountain, but it’s in the hundreds. In KK we passed a bookstore, in which I noticed a two-volume set of books each about 3 inches thick, titled “Orchids of Mount Kinabalu”. The forest itself is a very odd mix, with typical rainforest-type trees (as one might expect to see in Lamington National Park) side by side with tall seeding grasses, pale eucalypts and conifers. Of more interest to me was the avian inhabitants of the trees, which at the top of the trail, included a pair of brilliant Bornean Leafbirds.

 

View from the Bundu Tuhan shelter

We came to the end of the trail, and walked back to park HQ, stopping to admire a male Mugimaki Flycatcher (a winter visitor) and a pair of Bornean Green Magpies, feeding alongside a squirrel (neither of us has a mammal guide, so there’s going to be a lot of “a squirrel” and “a tree-shrew” in this write-up) and some Chestnut-hooded Laughing Thrushes.

Bornean Green Magpie

We went for breakfast at the restaurant outside the park gates, before setting off on our main trail for the day - the Kiau View Trail, the entrance to which is actually just before the park gate. We birded the trail for almost the whole afternoon, intercepting a few bird waves along the way. The low point of the day was suddenly hearing a rasping call coming towards us, one I recognised as belonging to a Whitehead’s Spiderhunter, a major target for Mount Kinabalu, one of the famous (or infamous, given how many dip on them) ‘Whitehead’s Trio’ of Spiderhunter, Trogon and Broadbill. We scrambled to get into a position from which we could view the treetop it was calling from, but we had no luck - by the time we reached a suitable vantage point the bird had stopped calling. A twenty minute wait showed no further signs of avian life in the area.

We emerged onto the road and took the trailhead opposite, the Silau Silau trail, back to park HQ before returning to the resthouse for a break and to settle our room fees with our host. As we relaxed, we could hear a Dark Hawk-cuckoo calling “just down the road there”, as Brandon put it. I disagreed, and ended up being right, as he disappeared for half an hour to chase it without success.

We returned to the park in the evening to watch the sunset over Kinabalu, hoping for a repeat of yesterday’s spectacular show. I suspect it was a one-time performance though, as today the clouds shrouding the mountaintop barely lifted in time for the sun to illuminate the top of the ridge. Still, we have 5 nights left, so you never know.

After sunset, we spotlit our way back up the main road to where we had left the Kiau View trail this afternoon, hearing very distant Mountain Scops-owls and Collared Owlets. With nothing much to see, we came back down, looking forward to a hearty and cheap meal at the restaurant outside the park gate. Except when we got there we were informed the kitchen was closed, leaving us no choice but to go 700m back up the hill and into the park, to the much-more-expensive Liwagu restaurant, one of the Sutera Sanctuary Lodges establishments.

Despite having to pay three times as much for a meal, the food we got was excellent - and they had roti canai (chicken curry with delicious flatbread), which I wasted no time in ordering. Brandon deliberated over the menu for five minutes before ordering bolognese. The waitress and I were both very disappointed.

We made the long walk back to the resthouse and I disappeared up to the outhouse for a shower - cold water only, as I very quickly discovered, and off to bed.

January 30th (Saturday)

The 5am wake up this morning wasn’t too bad actually, as we dropped off to sleep quite quickly around 10pm last night. We readied ourselves for the day, and set off to the park gates. The man on the gate gave us a quick glance then ignored us, so we walked right past him without stopping to pay the entry fee - at RM10 a pop, and only a finite amount of cash remaining, it’s better for us to avoid expenses wherever possible. Plus it’s not like Sutera isn’t making the park enough money, with the prices they put on everything.

On the topic of VISA acceptance over here, so far I’ve found that pretty much everything is cash-only. Brandon and I both brought the equivalent of AUD$500 in Malaysian Ringgit, which should last us until we next encounter an ATM in Ranau. There are no ATMs of any kind at Mount Kinabalu HQ itself, annoyingly!

Back to this morning - it was still dark, but there was enough ambient light along the road for us to see where we were going without torches, so we made the trek without them.It was a very long, steep walk. At about 6:30am we reached the Kiau lookout, with a lovely view of the mountain’s peak just as the first rays of the sun touched the rock. Brandon stopped to mess about with his boots, but I could hear Crimson-headed Partridges off the path ahead, so I went off to chase them. I couldn’t, as they disappeared to cackle at me from further down the heavily-forested hill, so I continued on, assuming Brandon was following behind.

This was probably the biggest mistake I’ve made all year.

I continued on up the road by myself, stopping every now to look at birds moving across, and admiring a Grey Wagtail which a passing ranger’s car flushed up from the road ahead of me. Reaching a clearing on a corner at the top of the steepest part of the hill, I stopped for a while to let Brandon catch up. As I sat there, I could hear what sounded like a tiny person blowing raspberries at me from the cover of a tangle of vines, and it rang a vague bell as the contact call of Sunda Bush-warbler, one of our montane targets. A quick search turned up two of these tiny, nondescript birds - pretty much plain brown all over, with a few markings on the face - and I turned back to find Brandon so he could get a look at them too.

By this time I’d been in the one spot for about twenty minutes, and as I turned back, Brandon had finally caught up. He had a disgustingly smug look on his face. It gave me chills.

“Sunda Bush-warblers over there”, I said, waving my arm in the direction of the bush they were chirping from.

“Oh nice. Hey, guess what I saw.”

“If you say Mountain Serpent-eagle I’m going to clobber you with my lens.”

“Nope. Whitehead’s Broadbill.”

My stomach dropped through the road. One of the biggest targets we and any other birder had on Mount Kinabalu, Whitehead’s Broadbill is an iffy bird at best, a grass-green iridescent tennis ball with purple streaks and throat patch. And I had missed it.

Pausing only to get hurried directions from Brandon, I sprinted back off down the hill. “Where are the Bush-warblers?” he called after me. I called back over my shoulder, but I’m not sure he heard me. It turns out you can really get some speed going sprinting down a mountain.

I arrived back at the patch of forest next to the lookout panting, knowing that within the last half-hour a Broadbill had been sitting in one of these very trees. I paced up and down the road, tuning in to spot the slightest movement among the tangled greenery. Silence on the road. I broke out the speaker and started playing the Broadbill call - no response. I stayed in that section of the road for nearly 30 minutes, seeing nothing other than a single Little Pied Flycatcher. Clearly the Broadbill had moved on.

I went and stood at the rail of the lookout, cursing my decision to chase partridges, along with my companion’s decision not to come and find me after seeing them - given that he saw them just after the lookout, I couldn’t have been more than 40m up the road. After fuming for a while, i figured that standing around moping about Broadbills wouldn’t get me any lifers, so I walked back up the stupid hill to where Brandon was still waiting. About half way up my phone buzzed, and I had a facebook message from Brandon which read “Julian get up here noe”.

Given that he’d been in such a rush to type that he’d made a typo, I took off and sprinted up the hill, arriving breathless at the top, where Brandon was just lowering his bins.

“Spiderhunters were just here.”

Oh COME ON.

I could hear the Whitehead’s Spiderhunters in the valley, but they were now out of sight. For the second time in twenty minutes I paced a section of road, playing a Whitehead’s call at a bird I couldn’t see. This was immeasurably frustrating - and bush-bashing off the path wasn’t an option given the sheer hillside.

We waited. Ten minutes - still calling, though less often than before. Fifteen. Silence. Then all of a sudden at about twenty minutes, a call close by. We rushed back to our original vantage point over the treetops where Brandon had initially seen them - there was definitely one calling in that tree, its raspy voice echoing out across the valley. I stared intensely at the tree, searching for any minute sign of movement. There - a flutter in the very top. I raised my bins, and had to search for a second to pick out the small, black-streaked grey shape, its enormous bill curving scimitar-like from its face. Whitehead’s Spiderhunter was on the list.

 

Distant views of a Whitehead's Spiderhunter

There were actually two working the tree, poking their immense bills into the tube-like yellow flowers. We watched them for a little while, before I turned to Brandon. He looked sheepish.

“While you were away chasing the Broadbill I got Bornean Bald Laughing-thrush”

Open This Link to see a representation of how I greeted this news.

As context - the Laughing-thrush is essentially as high-profile a Kinabalu target as Whitehead’s Broadbill, but far less attractive (as you might guess by the name) and much harder to pin down. Broadbills are at least territorial; Laughing-thrushes roam the mountainside freely with the bird waves. I’ll be staking out the Broadbills every morning until either we leave or I see one - but Laughing-thrush is pretty random.

Nevertheless, the Spiderhunter, arguably the hardest of the Whitehead’s Trio to find on the mountain, was under the belt - it’s hard to be too sour after that!

We worked our way up the hill, birding slowly along the way, all the way up to Timpohon Gate, entrance to the Kinabalu Summit Trail. You have to pay (and hire a guide) to access the summit trail, so the gate is pretty much our stopping point on the mountain. On the way down we heard a call from an isolated treetop - a three-part rolling call that we had been hearing since we arrived at the mountain, but one whose maker we had been unable to locate. We figured this was as good an opportunity as we’d get to find out, so we sat down to scan the treetop for movement. It took a while for the bird to show itself, but when it did, it turned out to be a Golden-naped Barbet, a bird we had seen yesterday. No matter though, at least we knew what the call was now!

We stopped again at the Broadbill spot for another half hour, just wandering up and down playing the call with no success. Maybe dawn tomorrow will bring more luck.

It was a grueling 3km walk down the steep, twisting mountain road back to Park HQ, and by the time we reached the bottom our legs were on the verge of giving up. We struggled up the steps into the restaurant outside the park gate around 12pm, collapsing into the chairs and wolfing down a big lunch (we’d skipped breakfast in favour of being on the mountaintop at dawn).

We went back to the resthouse to relax for a while, sitting out on the verandah and watching the birds in the trees and flowering bushes opposite - Blyth’s Shrike-babblers, Bornean Flowerpeckers, Temminck’s and Olive-backed Sunbirds, along with squirrels of one variety or another. There are probably worse places to live, I reckon.

As the afternoon wore on, we decided to get back into the park (this time we were stopped at the gate to pay our entrance fee) to do some lighter birding around HQ. We had intended to go into the botanical gardens a little way up the main road, but when we got there it transpired that there was an entry fee of RM2.50. No thanks - we’d rather walk the trails for free. We took the Silau Silau up as far as the Liwagu restaurant, not seeing a whole lot, before returning to the middle of the trail to just sit and wait for a while.

I messaged Josh back in Sydney to tell him how we were going. No sooner had I sent a message reading “No Trogons or Woodpeckers yet”, we picked up a faint knocking sound deep in the forest. We found good vantage points, and after a while the sound seemed to be getting closer. Ten minutes later, I saw a dark shape moving like a massive Treecreeper up the side of a eucalypt. Woodpecker! She sat obligingly in the sun for a moment, allowing me a good view of her orange-and-black chequered primaries. Only one species up here has those - Orange-backed Woodpecker, described in the field guide as being a ‘scarce resident’. A pretty good start to our Woodpecker list, and an excellent last lifer for the day.

On the way back out of the park we passed the lookout from which we had watched the sunset over the peak of the mountain on the first day. This evening, you would never have known the peak was there. Behind the closer foothills, a solid wall of cloud and mist rose, completely obscuring the face of the mountain. With nothing to see, we went for an early dinner and returned to the resthouse.

 

"What mountain?"

I went for my cold shower as soon as we got back, before darkness fell and the temperature dropped properly. I have, however, just made a discovery. If you flip the Big Red Switch on the Ominous Looking Box on the wall, an explosion of red wires emanating from it and disappearing into the roof of the outhouse, it actually turns on the water heater in the shower (which we both assumed didn’t work, as the knob to adjust the temperature is missing and none of the taps in the room have anything to do with the heater). I enjoyed a blissfully warm shower.

I have decided to keep this revelation to myself. Brandon may have seen Whitehead’s Broadbill and the Laughing-thrush, but he won’t be having a warm shower unless he has the nerve to flip the scary switch, which happens to be in a completely different part of the outhouse.

Revenge is sweet.

We awake at 3:30am tomorrow to hike back up the mountain (if our bodies will make it) to stake out Everett’s Thrush and the Broadbill at dawn.