Bukit Fraser Departure Day and Journey to Jerantut

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In the morning I woke up to find a leech in my bathroom crawling towards me. I’m not sure how that got there, whether it had come up the drain or latched onto my bag or something. But I went out for one last morning of sunrise birding at Bukit Fraser around the Telekom Loop which was good because I was able to add a few interesting birds and also saw a group of wild boars eating out of an upturned bin near on of the fancy cottages although they were extremely skittish about having a camera pointed at them. I said goodbye to all the super-cool common Bukit Fraser birds like the Minlas and Laughingthrushes and Fantails and Spiderhunters and got the taxi down to Raub with a nice view on the drive down. There were a number of fallen trees across the road which had been cut and moved to the side which weren’t there when I did the walk down on the second day so they must be from the storm the other day.



At the Raub bus station I had to wait a little while back in the heat of the lowlands for a bus to Kuala Lipis at 1:20 and then at Kuala Lipis I had another wait of just over 3 hours for the bus to Jerantut leaving at 5:15. I managed to find some food though at the one place that wasn’t closed for Ramadan. This is the first time I’ve had any real problem at all finding food because of Ramadan and it wasn’t a problem ultimately. The bus station at Kuala Lipis had loads of Asian Glossy Starlings nesting in the rafters and there was a Crimson Sunbird around too.

The bus to Jerantut went through some interesting forest habitat and I saw a wild langur from the bus. There was also a cage full of hanging parrots outside a house near the side of the road which is a reminder of one of the biggest threats to the birdlife in the region; the caged bird trade. Upon arrival at Jerantut just outside the bus station was an Oriental Pied Hornbill sitting on top of a lamp post conspicuously and calling loudly, which was nice to see.

I got to Jerantut fairly late and stayed at the Greenleaf Hostel which is fine and cheap. Obviously this is also when the incident with the wallet happened, as mentioned in the post above. Visiting the police station wasn’t exactly my plan for Jerantut but you could call it ‘interesting’. The police were actually very friendly. But before that I got some food from a supermarket for when I’m hoping to spend a couple of nights in a hide in the forest at Taman Negara.



New birds:

Speckled Piculet

Long-tailed Broadbill

White-tailed Flycatcher

Crimson Sunbird

Oriental Pied Hornbill

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