When: March 2016 Weather: Cool 20-25C
Nikon P900. Leica M 35mm summilux
Our Borneo Adventure (3) : Borneo Highland Resort (long post)
just spectacular vistas in Borneo
Following on my last post, we had dinner before heading up to the BHR and its vegetarian only restaurant, arriving well after darkness had fallen…..before checking in, we were brought to a dark track where Mr Yeo went to seek two of the most interesting frogs endemic to Borneo…..the Wallace Tree Frog and the Borneo Horned Frog…. Before long he beckoned us forward to see this beauty….
Wallace’s tree frog
Just the most gorgeously coloured and characterful frog imaginable
beautifully webbed feet with black highlights
find the frog?
the wonderfully camouflaged Bornean Horned Frog
with a fascinating leopard like spotted belly….the Bornean Horned Frog
Checking into our jungle cabins, we had 7,8 9 and 10, we awoke early at 63o to shoot around our cabins….there were flowering plants which were a magnet to a variety of spiderhunters…4 to be precise and this magnificent sunbird was the first bird we saw this morning…
The Temminck’s sunbird….very similar to our very own Crimson sunbird in Singapore
close up of Temmincks sunbird
the spectacled spiderhunter
thick billed spiderhunter
yellow eared spiderhunter
little spiderhunter
we then took a short drive to view the sea of clouds in the soft morning light…
dawn over borneo
brown throated sunbirds…male and female
close up of male brown throated flowerpecker
there were of course other colourful creepy crawlies
female sunbird
Having lunch back at the main clubhouse, we were still birding..this greater coucal strutted his stuff nearby…
and a gold whiskered barbet perched overhead
magpie robin
dusky munias another endemic which we spotted from the restaurant in the clubhouse
In the afternoon we headed for the Kalimantan viewpoint which is on a ridge overlooking Indonesian kalimantan and birded there for the rest of the day…..
the viewpoint marker..
Indonesian Kalimantan…the heart of Borneo
one of the first birds we sighted was this male scarlet minivet…
and he perched and posed for us reaso
and here, his mate, the rather yellower female scarlet minivet. They were cavorting in the leaves and entertaining us royally
Cinereous bulbul
The Bornean Banded Kingfisher in better light
A surprise migrant sighting…the dark sided flycatcher
a verditer flycatcher from afar….
apologies for fuzzy picture of verditer FC
the always endearing black thighed falconet which we had shot in Frasers Hill last year ..always a welcome sighting
the wonderfully resplentdent and fluorescent Rajah Brooke butterfly rested for us to shoot
Juvenile buff vented bulbul as IDed by Mr Yeo…
and this was one of my star captures of the trip…prob my favourite picture of the male Asian Paradise flycatrcher…we had so far only managed fleeting glimpses of a flash of white flying through the air….until I moved on ahead of the group and they were tracking it when they flushed it out and he flew over and perched on a branch at eye level, 20 feet from me…lucked out! P900 shot a few shots in the 3 seconds he perched…
Evening over Kalimantan
that night, Mr Yeo brought us the golf course to seek out the Bornean frogmouth…we arrived about 7pm as the sun disappeared and the gnats and sunflies started eating us……eventually, he turned his low level spotlight on an found it…what a beautiful and rarely sighted bird. Credit to my pal Ces Espiritu for this wonderful photo taken in pitch darkness with only a dim spotlight on the bird at about 30m.
The next day we were up early again and shot around the cabins and then sought out a viewpoint to try and shoot the almost total partial eclipse of the sun….alas the 90% cloud cover put paid to that…friends got much nicer pictures of the eclipse in Singapore! So we headed for breakfast instead …..
On the roof of the clubhouse were a pair of quite colourful Pacific Swallows!
It was another dreadful rainy morning but we headed back to the Kalimantan viewpoint and the adjacent trail for our last morning’s birding before departing….
crested serpent eagle
I was thrilled to see this unique looking bird…the dark throated oriole….typical golden yellow oriole colours but offset by that streaked breast..taken in the rain from afar with a caterpillar for brekky! horrible shot but still pleased with it
chestnut crested yuhinia..another endemic
The endemic Bornean Brown Barbet…..Som and I were just sitting at the viewpoint chatting when this little fellow perched way up a tree and the P900 just about managed to capture it….lovely bird!
we were seated at this bench 🙂
There was a very elusive bird darting among the trees and we had given up on it when from the same bench, Som and I saw the Scaly Breasted bulbul again from afar and I could only manage this partial ass shot…
I shall end this post with a picture of the Temminck’s sunbird which was taken from my cabin balcony…
So there you have it, our great Bornean adventure with great friends, great guide, great location and the most spectacular flora and fauna that nature in its greatness has given us. Thanks for viewing to the end of this mega post!
I absolutely adore these photographs. Your capture of the mountain / volcano and the frogs are fabulous. ‘Love em!