This was the trip that proved to be a turning point in our interest in birding and bird photography. In March 2008 I’d been working at the University of Malaya for 2 weeks before Maggie joining me in Kuala Lumpur (KL) where we spent a couple of days before flying to Sabah, the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo. When Maggie was with me in KL we stayed at the Traders Hotel with a fantastic view of the Petronas Towers and we spent 18 March sightseeing around KL, which was invariably very hot.
On our second day we used a local travel company to get a couple of guides to take us to Fraser’s Hill, which is a town in the hills that was used in colonial times to escape the heat of lower elevations. On the way up it was fun to see the Long-tailed Macaques with their young, which were present beside the road.
The two ladies who were our guides had little knowledge of birds or wildlife so we were very much on our own to explore Fraser’s Hill. We enjoyed the colonial-era architecture of the town, including Ye Olde Smokehouse, which is a fascinating old fashioned British-style hotel that I stayed at on a subsequent trip to Fraser’s Hill. The weather wasn’t good, with drizzle on and off for much of the day but we did explore some of the rainforest trails and photographed the beautiful tropical flowers. We also got a record shot of a Silver-eared Mesia.
On 20 March we made the short flight to Kota Kinabalu, the state capital of Sabah on the north coast of Borneo for a three night visit to KK as it’s known before moving on into the interior. We stayed at the very comfortable Le Meridien hotel and had amazing views from our room over the South China Sea and the lively night market, which was just opposite the hotel.
On 21 March we chartered one of the many small tourist boats in KK to take us to Gaya Island and the Tunku Abdul Rahman Park on Manukan Island, where we were able to do some bird photography. There we saw a number of the common birds from the region, including Pied Triller, Yellow-vented Bulbul and Barn Swallow.
A highlight of our trip was spending three nights at the famous Borneo Rainforest Lodge in the Danum Valley, which we reached by flying to Lahad Datu, followed by a 2 hour drive over very rough roads. This is an excellent base for exploring the rainforest, with very comfortable rooms, a great restaurant and knowledgeable guides to take you into the rainforest.
There were twice daily trips into the surrounding rainforest to see the local fauna and flora, and also geological features. Despite not being solely a birding trip, we did see some good birds, including the Scarlet-rumped Trogon, Rufous-crowned Babbler, Grey-breasted Spiderhunter, Spotted Fantail, Bornean Crested Fireback, Blue-throated Flycatcher and Spectacled Spiderhunter.
No visit to Borneo would be complete without seeing the Orang Utan in the wild. We were fortunate that while we were staying at the Borneo Rainforest Lodge a couple of local people were employed by a research programme to track and keep records of an Orang Utan known at King, which lived in the Danum Valley. We came across King and the observers on one rainforest walk and managed to get a few reasonable photos, even though King was fairly high up in the trees.
Each evening we had a guided night walk in the rainforest to observed the many insects and amphibians that appear and which are difficult to observe during the day.
We really enjoyed our visit to Peninsula Malaysia and Borneo in March 2008, especially the time we spent at the Borneo Rainforest Lodge in the Danum Valley. At this time we were very much novices at birding and bird photography, but experiences such as seeing a Stork-billed Kingfisher flying down the Danum River inspired us to learn more, especially how to take good photographs of birds, which is never easy, especially in relatively dark forests. Looking back it’s amazing that we got any good pictures at all in the challenging conditions of the rainforest, but we’re pleased with the photos above considering our lack of experience at the time.