Sarawak: A Good Day at Kubah

One of our more surprising discoveries during my brief swing through Kuching in August/September 2013 was that Man, the husband of Eileen's old classmate Siew, was a birder.  Man had not been out in the field, though, since moving to Sarawak from Kuala Lumpur.  Of course I had to remedy that situation, so on Saturday, September 7, Man picked me up for an early run to Kubah National Park.

The day proved unusually cool, and what we had intended as a fairly short visit (or one that would last only until the heat became unbearable and the birds shut up) extended through much of the day. A good thing, too; in the early hours the forest was as quiet as I had ever found it, and I wondered if I had picked the wrong destination for Man's reintroduction to the world of birding. 

We spent most if our time working back and forth along what is usually the most profitable stretch of road, between the head of the waterfall trail and the entrance to the frog pond. The frogs, of course, were holed up for the day, but the pond turned up a fleeting glimpse of Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher (Ceyx erithaca) and the best looks I have had at this bird, Horsfield's Babbler (Malacocincla sepiaria).  Horsfield's, though not always easy to see, are loud and persistent singers. Today it seemed that they were in a particularly demonstrative mood. 

We also had good looks at a Checker-throated Woodpecker (for the scientific name, see below!), a species I see only occasionally.  It is an active bird that moves quickly through the forest, picking food from the bark, rather than spending a lot of time excavating at any one spot.  That may be why encountering one can be a hit-or-miss affair.

The Checker-throated Woodpecker has usually been listed as Picus mentalis, but its name has undergone a recent sea-change.  First, it has been removed from Picus and transferred to the genus Chrysophlegma along with its closest relative the Greater Yellownape (C. flavinucha) and the Banded Woodpecker (C. miniaceum) - not, though, with the Lesser Yellownape, which remains in Picus as P. chlorolophus.  Its new name should therefore be Chrysophlegma mentale, with a gender change from the masculine mentalis to the neuter mentale to match its new generic allocation.

However, the species mentale has now been split into two, mentale from Java and  humii from the rest of its range, including Borneo.  The generic changes have been accompanied by new English names, so our bird should now be known as the Checker-throated Yellownape (Chrysophlegma humii), and mentale is now, according to the online update to the Handbook of the Birds of the World, to be called the Javan Yellownape.

After a few turns back and forth along the pavement, we decided to descend the Waterfall Trail, pausing en route to admire some of Borneo's many meliponine, or stingless, bees busy at the mouths of their tubular nests. 

Many of the stingless bees in Borneo, including these, nest in cavities at the base of large trees, clustered together either in single-species colonies or assemblages with other species.  The bees are probably members of the genus Trigona, but it would take more of an entomologist than I can pretend to be to be sure, or to tell if the two tubes here belong to the same, or different, bees.  Anyway, they're very small, and black.

The trail proved rather devoid of birds (not to mention, in spots, being in a shocking state of disrepair).  Here, though, is a very poor shot of a relatively uncommon bird, Finsch's Bulbul (Alophoixus finschii), at the trailhead. 

As always, walking the trail is a good way to get an appreciation for the remarkable life of the forest, including this cluster of bright yellow mushrooms.

Tropical Asian forests boast a fascinating community of forest-floor butterflies that feed on rotten fruit instead of flowers, and prove that a butterfly doesn't need bright colours to be spectacular.  The Tufted Jungle King (Thauria aliris) is one of the largest and most spectacular of the lot.  It is a member of the Tribe Amathusiini (the palm kings).

Far commoner (and plainer) is the Common Three Ring (Ypthima pandocus).

Not far from the bee colony we came across a Slender Squirrel (Sundasciurus tenuis) attacking a forest fruit.

Slender Squirrels are delightful, active little animals, endemic to the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and Sumatra - three lands united in the last Ice Age, and still known collectively, to biogeographers, as Sundaland.

By the time of our final turn around the frog pond (and another fruitless effort to show Man the kingfisher), it was almost noon. I assumed the birding was done, and turned my attention instead to one of the few dragonflies of the day. The pond is an excellent place to find Tyriobapta torrida, the so-called Treehugger. This male preferred to perch on a log at the pond edge, presumably guarding his territory.

The very different-looking female, though, demonstrated the reason for its English name. Unlike most members of its family (Libellulidae), but like many dragonflies from other families, this dragonfly perches vertically, preferably on tree trunks where the female at least is reasonably well camouflaged against the bark. This behavior gave me some trouble the first time I encountered a female, at MacRitchie Reservoir in Singapore, where I spent some time trying to figure out what sort of darner, or emerald, or anything else but a libellulid it could possibly be. 

My assumption about the birds, though, was about to be proved spectacularly wrong. I was struck by a loud, clear song coming from the undergrowth near the pond - three, or sometimes two, monotone whistles, the first note higher in pitch. As a North American, its phrasing reminded me if the song of a Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapilla), but it was much stronger and richer. I had no idea what was making it, so I tried whistling the same song in the hope of attracting its owner. A few moments later, a slim, long-billed black head and neck, heavily streaked with white, poked above the shrubbery. To my delight and astonishment, it belonged to a Bornean Ground-babbler (Ptilocichla leucogrammica), one of the more elusive of Borneo's endemic birds, and very much a new species for me. 

I had better explain, by the way, that this bird is called "Bornean Wren-Babbler" in most books. Unfortunately, that name won't do because it isn't related to the real wren-babblers (which, recent research indicates, are not babblers at all but belong to a newly-erected family of their own, Pnoepygidae).  Ptilocichla, on the other hand, really is a babbler. Recent lists have taken to calling the Pnoepygidae  "cupwings" instead of wren-babblers in recognition of their newly-independent status. I suppose, therefore, we could continue to call our current bird of the hour a wren-babbler, but it isn't really very much like a wren, and it does live on the ground. So Bornean Ground-Babbler it shall be here. 

What the bird did remind me of, rather than a wren, was one of the (totally unrelated) South American antbirds. Susan Myers' guide to the birds of Borneo describes it as rail-like, something you could say equally well of a number of chunky-bodied, short-tailed, thin-necked and long-billed antbirds. It's a remarkable case of evolutionary convergence. 

Anyway, I recorded a bit of the bird's song on my iPhone (using an app called iTalk, if you must know), and succeeded in drawing the bird in almost immediately (yes, I am not above using playback, judiciously I hope).  Here it is, converted into a YouTube video so I could upload it to Blogger.  The bird, which is surely uncommon species, must have been quite startled at the idea if a rival in the vicinity. After am few minutes he even flew out and lit momentarily on the railing around the frog pond before flying across it in search of his challenger. I could hear him calling for some time after he disappeared.   Interestingly, I later found that the song I heard differed from available recordings of the species by having the first note higher, rather than lower, than the succeeding ones.  I heard one again on a later visit making the same sound, so perhaps there is a song-dialect difference between birds in western Borneo from those in Sabah where the other recordings were made.
 

Considerably chuffed by our serendipitous encounter with the Ground-Babbler, we decided to press on to the other side of Kubah National Park, at the Matang Wildlife Centre. Most people come here for the dispiriting exhibits of caged wildlife.  Instead, we walked around the more accessible parts of the property while I marveled at the singular absence of damselflies along the numerous rivulets flowing beneath the trail. An exception was this Euphaea impar, one of the handsomest and most stylish-looking of Malaysian odonates. 
 

Like the Slender Squirrel, impar is a Sundaland endemic. There is nothing quite like it on the Malay Peninsula, but a very similar species, E. ameeka, lives on Borneo, where it was described, from Brunei, only in 1995 (it now graces the front cover of Orr's The Dragonflies of Borneo).  I have never seen it to my knowledge; perhaps it does not occur around Kuching.   The most obvious difference is the shape of the uppermost blue patch on the side of the male, which tapers to a point in impar but is squared off in ameeka.

The little streams that attracted the damselfly were filled with small fishes, in a variety of colours and patterns.

Exactly what they are, or whether more than one variable species is involved here, it is difficult to say.  Similar fishes in the area, or at least the ones with broad crossbars, have been described as False Spanner Barbs (Barbodes kuchingensis), a species confined, as the name implies, to the area near Kuching.  I suspect that the fish marked only with a single blotch below the dorsal fin might be some other sort of barb, but I don't know which.

OK, here's where I need some help.   I photographed this thinking that it was some sort of odd fungus, but I'm now not so sure. It could even be an insect nest of some kind, but this is one case where I have failed the animal–vegetable–mineral test. What is this?

Yes, I know, this is a snail, but which one?  It is large and obvious enough to make me suspect that it is exotic rather than native, but I can't be sure.  It looks a lot like a Giant East African Land Snail (Achatina fulica), established as a pest through much of the Indopacific.

 Of course this was supposed to be a birding expedition, so I should at least end with the bird.  In a fruiting palm we found three Grey-bellied Bulbuls, an uncommon species and one of the handsomer of its frequently-drab family. it made a very nice finish for the day.