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Published: August 22nd 2006
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I was so glad to get out of Kuala Lumpur. I know there are people that visit there or even live there that love the place, but I'm definitely not one of them! Bukit Fraser on the other hand, I LOVE. Nice forest, nice temperature (21 degrees: Bukit means hill, so the elevation's about 1500 metres), nice birds, lots and lots of nice butterflies. I was planning on staying there for a week and then heading for Taman Negara, but I met a couple of German birders there called Ingo and Conny who had a rental car and were going to be driving all the way to Taman Negara. It would have been like looking a gift horse in the mouth, so I changed my plans and got a lift with them, giving me only two and a half days at Bukit Fraser. The alternative (making my own way there) meant taking a bus to Raub, then a bus to Benta, then a bus to Jerantut, then a taxi to the jetty at Kuala Tembeling, then the boat to Taman Negara, which would have been a mission and certainly an overnighter at one of those towns.
I got into
Bukit Fraser at noon on the 7 August and got a room at the Puncak Inn. Its the cheapest place in town at 55 Ringgits. The desk guy said he'd give me a discount because I was a birdwatcher: how good is that? Turned out to be 10% off which is alright. He also said he had a friend staying who was also a birdwatcher and I could go out watching with him. I got some food, then set out on an easy track called Hemmant's Trail, where I saw a few new birds. At the end of the trail I met a non-birding English couple, then headed for the Bishop's Trail just up the road. On the way I had my first bird wave. For non-birders, a bird wave is basically a wave of birds (uh-huh) where a whole bunch of different species forage through the trees or bushes flushing out insects. Its a tropical phenomena and Bukit Fraser is well-known for it (having said that, none of the birders there at the same time as me had much success with meeting bird waves).
I got no birds to speak of on the Bishop's Trail, but while
I was standing on the track looking around, I happened to look straight up and there was a big male siamang sitting in the tree directly above my head! He didn't seem too concerned by my presence, but preferred to have some leaves or branches between him and the camera, so I couldn't get any photos. Then he swung across to a tree I'd passed earlier and there was his female, whom I did get photos of. They were both completely silent the whole time. They were the only siamang I saw at Bukit Fraser, but I heard others calling on several occasions. I also found my first giant millipede on the trail. I'm not sure which was better, the siamang or the millipede, but that's just me. Another new species on the trail was the Himalayan striped squirrel. I just call them Tamiops (their genus) because its quicker. They're really tiny and striped like a chipmunk. The first one I saw fell thirty feet out of its tree, hit the ground and BOUNCED, rolled to the trunk and vanished. I couldn't find it so I assumed it was fine.
Back at the town centre, the desk guy
was talking about his English birder friend again, then he says "Oh, here he comes now." It seems he was a bit loose with the terms 'friend' and 'English'. The birder had only arrived at Bukit Fraser and met the desk guy that very morning, and he wasn't so much English as Swedish based in Bangkok. Oh, and did I mention it was also Peter Ericcson? He's only one of the better-known birders in Thailand!
The next day I started walking down the access road to "the Gap" (a mountain pass that runs past Bukit Fraser; its traditional for birders to walk down the 7km road in the morning and hitch back up). Met up with Peter on the way so tagged along with him. It was a good way to pick up birds I wouldn't have got otherwise. He was just walking along going "that call's the black-browed barbet, that one's the gold-whiskered, that one's the ochraceous bulbul..." He knew all the calls and I could barely identify the birds themselves. That's what years of Asian experience gives you. Along the way we met two groups of four birders each. The second group contained Ingo and Conny
and a couple of ex-New Zealanders living in South Africa. After we'd finished, me and Peter hitched back to Bukit Fraser on the bus (yes, we hitched on the bus. Isn't that great?). I went off around a trail called the Telekom Loop, said to be awesome for bird waves. Not that day (or for Peter the day before, so it wasn't just me). I walked for two hours getting nothing but the commonest species, before finally a Blyth's hawk-eagle glided past, and then I got a really good wave containing among others a black and crimson oriole (female unfortunately) and blue nuthatch. Then I went to the Shahzan Inn to use their internet at 9 Ringgits per hour (at the office at Puncak Inn it was 3 Ringgits per 5 minutes!)
The best birds for me so far were the chestnut-capped laughing thrush (very common but very attractive, and sounds like a cat being strangled), mountain fulvetta (also very common but very nice), silver-eared mesia (again very common, but extremely beautiful), blue nuthatch (just awesome), and chestnut-crowned warbler (so tiny and round and cute!)
On the 9 August I met up with Peter at the
Jelai Resort where all the other birders were staying, because lots of birds famously pass by the entrance court every morning. That particular morning of course wasn't as good as others, with the green magpie and chestnut-crowned laughing thrushes failing to show. I got Sunda cuckoo-shrike, fire-tufted barbet, orange-bellied leafbird and others (18 species in all, 7 of them new for me). After that I took a walk along the Hemmant's Trail looking for some rufous-browed flycatchers that Peter had got there, and instead found a brown wood owl sitting in plain view a couple of metres off the track. I never did find the flycatchers. Maybe the owl ate them. After that was the Bishop's Trail again (and, seriously, the ONLY birds I saw were a pair of flowerpeckers and a little cuckoo-dove), but the two hours walking were made worthwhile when I found a forest tortoise sitting by the trail. I think it was a young impressed tortoise (referring to its shell structure, not its state of mind). Ingo and Conny had got loads of birds on that trail that very morning. Finally I walked to the Jeriau waterfall, 4km downhill, stopping at the dump along the way where I got only grey wagtails (I was hoping for Malayan whistling thrush). The waterfall was actually quite nice, quite a lot of rubbish though, and I got a brief view of a departing blue whistling thrush. Apparently Malayan water shrews swim in the waterfall's lake after sunset but I couldn't be bothered walking the 4km back, uphill, in the dark, so I gave them a miss.
The next morning I would be leaving for Taman Negara with Ingo and Conny...
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