Sarawak: The Forest at Permai

On February 20, 2012, I joined my friend Hans Breuer (and some tourists he was guiding) for an excursion through the coastal forest behind the Permai Rainforest Resort.

The forest sits on a rocky hillside rich in mosses and ferns... 

..forcing many of the trees to straddle their roots over blocks of stone to reach the soil below.

This is a mixed lowland dipterocarp forest.  The resort website lists thirty species of forest trees, including five dipterocarps.  Many support woody vines snaking their way ion the canopy.

The stouter vines can seem like woody pythons encircling their hosts.  There are real pythons here too; in October 2011 Hans found a five-metre-long Reticulated Python (Python reticulatus) here, relaxing in a forest stream.  He has written a highly entertaining account of the event, with pictures (and expressions of frustrated jealousy from fellow snake enthusiasts).

These are the pitchers of, I believe, Nepenthes gracilis, a common lowland pitcher plant in Borneo. [NB: more likely to be Nepenthes mirabilis, also a common species - see Sean L's valuable comment below].

The forest floor seem particularly rich in fungi (at least, I assume that the peculiar whitish mass in this photo is a fungus - I can't imagine what else it could be).

 

I'm on firmer ground here - these are certainly bracket fungi (and remarkably colourful ones), though I can't be more specific than that.  Bright orange bracket fungi are in fact quite common in Bornean forests.

Termite nests are a common sight in the forest.

Here is an extremely peculiar example.  I would be most curious to know which termite made it, and what (if any) is the function of those udder-like hanging protuberances.

I would be equally curious to know what this photograph, taken of a forest pool, is showing.  what are those spherical objects? As a naturalist, I'm ashamed to say that I haven't the faintest idea what I was looking at when I pressed the shutter.

I have had some help, here, though.  The shiny object in the crevice of this tree trunk is a land snail.

Ok, it's a snail, but which one?  My usual go-to expert on the subject, Gary Rosenberg, suggested I contact Menno Schilthuizen of Leiden University.  Menno was kind enough to reply: "It's a bit hard to tell what species the photos represent (mostly because I am more familiar with the species from Sabah, and there is not that much overlap with the species from Sarawak), but it looks like Hemiplecta humphreysiana, or a form (?) of that species that is somewhat smaller and darker and is usually found at the coast. I can't tell the size from the images, but if it is this species, the shell should be about 30-40 mm across."

That's good enough for me.  In addition to Borneo, the species is also found on the Malay Peninsula and in Sumatra.

We saw, I am afraid, few birds.  The Cream-vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus simplex) is one of a group of common, drab and frustratingly similar bulbuls on Borneo.  This one has a white throat and vent.  On Peninsular Malaysia it is considerate enough to have a distinctive white iris, but on Borneo its eyes are as red as those of its look-alikes.

Other than tourists, Silvered Langurs (Presbytis cristata) are the most common primates at the resort, and seeing those gentle leaf-eaters (the langurs, not the tourists) is always a pleasure.

Sarawak: Sama Jaya Encounters

The Sama Jaya Nature Reserve in Kuching has been featured here before (and undoubtedly will be again; it is definitely a nice place for a walk.  These photos were taken on February 15, 2012).  It's not a bad place for a bit of birding; this is a calling Chestnut-winged Babbler (Stachyris erythroptera).  You can see the bare blue skin at the side of its neck that only becomes visible as it vocalises.

There is a local troop of Long-tailed Macaques (Macaca fascicularis) that are usually easy to find.  Unlike some macaques elsewhere, they do not seem to approach visitors, but seem rather nervous about it - have they been harassed in the past?

Skinks are common along the pathways.  They can be difficult to identify to species in the field.  The upper photo shows one of the more obvious ones, a Common or Striped Tree Skink (Apterygodon vittatum).  It is endemic to Borneo, and the only member of its genus.  The other animal is a member of the genus Mabuya, but I can go no further in giving it a precise name.

Here is an underwing view of the Borneo race of Malay Lacewing (Cethosia hypsea hypsea).

The Grey Pansy (Junonia atlites) is a very common butterfly in open country, particularly near water.

By contrast, the Cruiser (Vindula dejone) is a common inhabitant of forests.  Sama Jaya, with its small forest patch and open areas, has a cross-section of common species from both habitats (though the forest area is far too small for sustainable populations of most forest specialties).

I am woefully ignorant about Borneo's extensive land snail fauna, so for identification I am dependent on the kindness of others.  Thanks to Gary Rosenberg, I can tell you that this pulmonate. or lunged, snail is Dyakia regalis. Notice that, unlike most snail shells, this one spirals to the left rather than to the right, a condition referred to as sinistrorse.  The first scientific specimens were found, before 1850, near the house of James Brooke, first of the White Rajahs, and you can't get more Sarawakian than that.

I believe that this particularly dingy dragonfly is a female Neurothemis terminata, but I am not positive; most of the females I have seen are lighter and brighter than this one.

On a number of trips I have seen a ghostly "mystery dragonfly" coursing up and down the small stream behind the reserve, but a it never did not have a chance to place it.  This photo may not be the best, but it allowed me to name it at last: a male Zyxomma obtusum, a normally-crepuscular dragonfly whose white body stands out brightly in the failing light.  Females are brown, with green eyes.  Its black wingtips recall another blue-eyed dragonfly, Cratilla metallica, a forest beauty with very different behaviour (at first I thought that this was Cratilla, but it acted so unlike that frequently-perching species that I was quite relieved to find out it was something else.

Sarawak: Celebrating Sandflats

World Wetlands Day is celebrated on February 2 every year. The Kuching Branch of the Malaysian Nature Society recognised the 2012 event by organising a special event, 10 days later on February 12,  at Kampung Bako, with the support of local villagers.  

Bako is a gateway both to the national park that shares its name and to Bako-Buntal Bay,  an important staging post and wintering ground for water birds and a designated Important Bird Area (IBA).  

The trip served a double purpose: to educate the villagers, and especially their children, to the importance of the area, and to visit the sandflats in the bay.   I was, of course, delighted to be invited to come along.

On the way, we could see that some reclamation was going on in the mangroves: note that the trees in the foreground are arranged in neat, and obviously planted, rows.

Our team included the village headman (Tuan Haji Wahid bin Sani), several honorary kampung wardens, and crack birders like Daniel Kong (second from left, with binoculars).

 To get very far in an exploration of the sandflats, even at low tide, you definitely need a boat  (or, in our case, a couple of boats).  For other photos of the event see the MNS Kuching blog entry here.

Daniel photographs me.  I return the compliment.

Yeo Siew Teck checks the sandflats for birds.

The village headman takes a phone call as he explores the bay.

We spent about a half hour on the flats, birding, observing and taking photographs.

The wardens seemed to enjoy the experience immensely!

Most of the birds we saw were, unfortunately, at a fair distance, but we had several scopes with us to make up for that.

These Terek Sandpipers (Xenus cinereus), a common wintering species on the bay,  did venture a bit closer.

Certainly the bird of greatest importance for the bay's status as a conservation area is the Chinese Egret (Egretta eulophotes).Though classed as Vulnerable, not Endangered, by Birdlife International, this is a declining species with a total estimated population of only 2,600-3,400 mature individuals (even if, as Birdlife suggests in its fact sheet on the species, this is an underestimate, the population is still very low).

More than 400 Chinese Egrets have been recorded wintering at Bako-Buntal Bay – perhaps at 10 of the entire global population.

Besides scanning the distance for birds, I kept my eye out for things close at hand. This cast-up, bleached cowrie shell (Cypraea sp.) bears the lower valves of a number of jingle shells (Anomiidae) that glued themselves to it in life.

This shell of this Girdled Horn Snail (Cerithidea cingulata), a common mudflat inhabitant, has been taken over by a banded hermit crab (species uncertain).

Where there is mud (at least in Southeast Asia) there are sure, at least where the water is brackish or salt, to be mudskippers.  This little fellow leaping out of the water is probably a Serpent Mudskipper (Parapocryptes serperaster).

These may be too (they seem particularly long-bodied), though they are so covered with mud that I cannot make out their identifying features.

After our tour of the flats we headed back to the kampung for the next part of the programme - perhaps the most important: our meeting with the community, and with their children.

Yeap Chin Aik, head of conservation for MNS, gave a presentation on the importance of Bako-Buntal Bay to the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, the major migratory route for the winter.

The presentation was followed by awards to the local children, who had been busy at a colouring contest while we were out on the bay.

As we were getting ready to head for home, I found more mudskippers along the shores of the inlet.

Male Blue-spotted Mudskippers (Boleophthalmus boddarti) raised their ornate dorsal fins in challenge to their rivals.

For such seemingly-drab and often mud-covered little fishes, Blue-spotted Mudskippers are surprisingly well-ornamented.

So is their cousin, the Gold-spotted Mudskipper (Periophthalmus chrysospilos).  Birds may well have been the reason for our morning on the bay, but mudskippers made for a charming end to it.