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Published: April 3rd 2009
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29th March 2009
I was up before dawn this morning, it had been a cold and restless night for me so eventually I gave up trying to sleep and took my camera outside to see what beasties I could find. Again I was disappointed; I found a large and fantastic beetle with huge mandibles, it was pretty aggressive. I flipped him the right way up so I handled it with extreme care and got my photos. As the sun rose of the mountain an Ashy Drongo and a Pacific Swallow perched on the telegraph wires next to the lodge. I sat and watched them hawking for insects for a good half an hour until our hostess woke up and I ordered myself a large coffee.
The grounds to the lodge are maliciously kept with and large variety of shrubs and flowers are in bloom attracting large yellow and black Birdwing Butterflies and the occasional Scarlet Sunbird. Another bit of paradise for me and I’m the only one around to observe it.
Pili starts moving around about 10:00am, we take coffee on the veranda with bananas and bread for breakfast. Pili waxed our boots last night in preparation for
today’s trekking; it could be a little muddy on the hill paths.
By midday we’re at the entrance to the park. In the eves of the park entrance a colony of swifts have built their nests. They race around our heads and into between the trees and building hawking for insects, their agility is incredible. This family of birds only ever touch down at the nest, for the rest of the year they remain mostly airborne, even sleeping on the wing.
We decide to trek the Kiau View and Silau-Silau trails in the park. The first one is not for the faint hearted as it entailed some very steep and slippy paths through the forest. We find it relatively easy, but a few months ago we’d have needed a doctor and a priest to have attempted them. Again we see and hear very little wildlife. I realise this is a hard place to encounter animals but I know we approached it in the correct way. We moved slowly and quietly, stopping and watching and looking for scat or feeding signs, no perfumes or deodorants and neutral coloured clothes. I’ve been doing this all my life so it makes
me ask the question why are these forests so still and quiet when they are supposed to be stuffed with wildlife. Maybe we’ll try a dawn start tomorrow and see if we have better success.
After finishing the trails which took us a good 3-4hrs we take a look around the Botanical Gardens. I hate to say it, but again what a major disappointment. A huge variety of plants have been gathered from the surrounding forest and mountains but unless you are a real botanist you have no idea what you are looking at. I have more knowledge than most tourists but even I was lost in the maze of plants species. Maybe five name tags were in the whole garden. After seeing how professional the equivalent Botanical Gardens are presented in New Zealand, Sydney Australia and Singapore this place is a disgrace. Both Pili and I made our concerns known to some of the staff but I don’t think they really cared. This is a tragedy because some of these species exist nowhere else in the World and if they want the eco-dollar they better get their acts together or Borneo will loose out and this could have
a very detrimental effect on the conservation projects running at the moment which are critical to the shrinking environment that’s left here. I truly despair at the way some of Borneo’s eco treasures are being presented to the outside World.
Again, as the creatures of habit they Pili and I confess to be, we leave the park and go and indulge in more fabulous Chinese cuisine. While we are waiting for our meal to be served I managed to photograph several birds in a flowering shrub and some kind of fruiting tree next to the resturaunt. The irony does not escape us, here we are sat waiting for food next to a construction site and we find more birdlife than we did in the entire time we were in the forest.
The evening comes and I do a little writing and archiving of my photos. We also go for a walk along the dark and busy road, clutching or head torches and shining them at all the speeding traffic that flies by. We eventually come to a couple of roadside restaurants and purchase a few food supplies for the dawn trek we’d planned for tomorrow morning.
Pili
retires early and again I go on my nightly bug and moth hunt, and every night is becoming more and more productive.
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ANN
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wonderful caring couple
Well you"ve done it again JOHN GREAT BLOG ,i new all those nature walks when you were young would help to mould you into a caring human being and of course now you are doing what you have always wanted to do and with a partner like pilar by your side nothing impossible. love mom xxxxx