Doucs at Son Tra


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Asia » Vietnam
March 29th 2017
Published: April 5th 2017
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Red-shanked Douc (Pygathrix naemeus)Red-shanked Douc (Pygathrix naemeus)Red-shanked Douc (Pygathrix naemeus)

photos taken at dusk in rain, hence their poor quality!
I got into Danang at 4pm after a six-ish hour bus ride from Kon Tum which involved a heated dispute with the driver over the "foreigner price" (basically him ripping off tourists and pocketing the extra money himself, because unlike with taxis or motorbikes the bus fares are a set price for everyone). I found a guesthouse just by the bus station, the Pho Xanh, which is 200,000 Dong per night.

The only reason I was back in Danang was to try and find red-shanked doucs on the Son Tra Peninsula just next to town. There are three species of douc monkeys. The black-shanked is easy to see at Cat Tien National Park. The grey-shanked is critically-endangered - that's the one I tried and failed to see at Mang Den. The red-shanked douc is the most common of the three species, and there is a good population of them in the forest on Son Tra. The full name of the peninsula is Nui Son Tra, which means "monkey mountain". Apart for the doucs there are also rhesus and Assamese macaques there. I had come here in 2015 and seen no monkeys at all, despite the macaques supposedly being common.
Red-shanked Doucs (Pygathris naemeus)Red-shanked Doucs (Pygathris naemeus)Red-shanked Doucs (Pygathris naemeus)

Male in the centre, the other two are at very top left. The photos were taken at dusk in rain, hence their poor quality!

The red-shanked doucs are also found at the next two places I'm going, Bach Ma National Park and Phong Nha-Ke Bang, but Son Tra seems like the most reliable spot. I had been told by a birder that he had been to Son Tra twice and seen the doucs easily both times, even though he just went up in a taxi while waiting on flights. I therefore hoped I could do the same - just swan on up there in a taxi, see the doucs, then go back to the guesthouse for the night and leave the next morning for Bach Ma. Nice and simple.

It had just started to spit at 4.30pm when I got a taxi. The driver spoke little English but said he knew the peninsula and the doucs. It kind of turned out he didn't know the peninsula at all, and kept stopping for directions. Also it was a bit further away than I remembered, so my hopes of the taxi fare not being too dear didn't last. The meter had already clocked up 350,000 Dong before we even left the coastal road and headed uphill. This was going to be an expensive fail!
Red-shanked Douc (Pygathrix naemeus)Red-shanked Douc (Pygathrix naemeus)Red-shanked Douc (Pygathrix naemeus)

photos taken at dusk in rain, hence their poor quality!

I was hopefully keeping an eye on all the trees as we drove. Once again there was not a single macaque seen, which was both surprising and disappointing. I have never seen the Assamese macaque before, and I thought that even if I didn't see any doucs at least I should see the macaques.

Somewhere along the road which runs across the tops of the peninsula's peaks we stopped at a likely-looking spot so I could scan the trees down the valley. The driver wandered up a bit further to ask some local guys under a tarpaulin tent if they had seen any monkeys. I couldn't see anything so followed him to see what the guys were saying. They hadn't seen any monkeys. I turned around and checked out the trees in the other direction with my binoculars. And right there in the open, in the canopy of a stand-alone tree, were three red-shanked doucs! This was almost literally the only point on the road from which they could be seen because of the other trees along the sides. Just blind luck. On the other side of the luck was that it started to rain properly right then, and also it was 6pm by now and in this part of the country that means dusk. So the viewing wasn't fantastic but better than nothing, and a few of the photos weren't extremely terrible (which is to say, they were terrible but not as terrible as the extremely terrible ones).

The taxi fare came out at 680,000 Dong which is about NZ$42. In real terms it isn't a lot. I mean it was two hours and something like 54 kilometres in total. A bargain really. Given the cost, though, Murphy's Law says that I will now see red-shanked doucs at Bach Ma and/or Phong Nha-Ke Bang. But equally, if I hadn't spent the money finding them on Son Tra then I wouldn't see them at the other two places either. That's just the way it goes.

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