Sarawak: Giant Weevils and Other Things

The early morning of August 24, 2014, found us, with our group of trainee birding guides, back at the Borneo Highlands overlook for a bit of practical birdwatching.

We spent the morning checking out the roadside birds, from the overlook down to the upper part of the road to the lowlands. As often happens, the birds themselves did not give me much of an opportunity for closeup photography (however useful they might have been as training subjects for our guides). Here an Asian Brown Flycatcher (Muscicapa dauurica) keeps an eye on us from a safe distance.  It is the dullest (and most common) of the migrant flycatchers that visit Borneo (there is also a resident race, umbrosa, in the northeast of the island).

I have always been much enamoured of forktails, the wonderful little riverside chats that decorate rocky streams through much of southern and Eastern Asia. Forktails can be absurdly tame, but the Chestnut-naped Forktail (Enicurus ruficapillus) never read that part of the field guide. It is, according to online ornithologist GrrlScientist,  "notable for its extreme shyness", and is a very difficult bird to get close to (which is my way of apologizing for the quality of these pictures).

The female has a much more extensive chestnut nape patch than the male. However, the male can erect his patch into a sort of mane, as this male is doing - perhaps as a sign of nervousness at my presence?

The forktail turned up along the edge of the road, and when I could tear myself away from it I was met with a spectacular view of the hillside forest below.
 

This is highland dipterocarp forest, at least in part, and the dipterocarp trees were indulging in one of their occasional fruiting seasons.

The crowns of the fruiting dipterocarps, studded with pinkish fruits, stood out magnificently against the surrounding canopy.

Other plants, nameless to me, were fruiting along with the dipterocarps.

Flowering plants were not the only objects of botanical interest and beauty; consider this fallen log, draped with mosses and epiphytic, bladelike ferns.

This Bamboo Orchid (Arundina graminifolia) has caught the attention of an assassin bug (Reduviidae).

When time permitted away from my course duties, I continued my pursuit of the local damselflies. Males of Heliocypha biseriata, with their brilliant violet epaulets, vied for control of bare rocks in the local streambeds.

By the little rivulet in front of the lodge I found Coeliccia flavostriata, one of the tinier and daintier of our local damselflies. 'Flavostriata' means 'streaked with yellow', an appropriate name for this little insect.

Blue male dragonflies in the genus Orthetrum always give me identification problems. Part of this (if I may speak in my own defense) is a lack of identification materials. There are two or three such species in Borneo: glaucum, luzonicum (?) and borneense, the last an endemic, highland 'rarity' that may turn out to be less rare, and more widespread, than originally thought. Unfortunately I can find nothing really helpful that tells me how to distinguish borneense from the other two. So which is this very peculiar insect, which seems to be missing a good deal of its usual blue pruinosity?  I haven't a clue (though it may well be just an odd-looking glaucum, the common species).

And what is this?  I originally put it down as Orthetrum luzonicum because of its pale blue thorax, but that species has a whitish face and bright blue-green eyes, making this probably glaucum again. Also, luzonicum is supposed to have a slimmer abdomen. Besides, according to this site luzonicum doesn't even occur in Borneo. So there.

As for Orthetrum pruinosum, in Borneo you can't mistake this beautiful insect for anything else - but it seems that it is actually a complex of two very similar species, the other if which ranges from the north of peninsular Malaysia to Japan.

Trithemis festiva presents no such identification problems - it's only common relative, T. aurora, is bright pink.

For once I had brought my macro lens with me, and I deployed it to portray this Footman Moth (Areas galactina), a day-flying moth (as are many of the other members of its family, the Arctiidae). Like many day-flying moths it is as colourful as any butterfly, if not more so. Its hindwings, which you cannot see here, are a rich, buttery orange-yellow, marked with black. This is a wide-ranging insect, found from China and the western Himalayas south to Indonesia.

Not colourful, but no less spectacular in its own way, was this Black Spiny Ant (Polyrhachis armata, or one of its near relations).

The insect of the day, though, was this Giant Palm Weevil (Macrochirus sp., probably M. praetor).  It had blundered into the lodge, and by the time I found it it was pretty much at death's door. Most of the world's 60,000-odd weevils are little creatures, but this one was a monster - at least the size of my thumb, not counting its massive legs and snout. It is one of the largest weevils in the world, and could serve as a perfect model for a movie alien.  In fact, recalling the Mondoshawan from The Fifth Element, it seems that it has already done so.

 Borneo Highlands, as I have often said before in this space, is an excellent place for butterflies. This time I only had a chance to photograph a couple of its regular species, including a Common Grass Yellow (Eurema hecabe)...

...and this Common Three-Ring (Yphthima pandocus).

This is the Bornean form of the Striped Black Crow (Euploea eyndhovii strix) - or, given the number of butterflies and moths that mimic these things, I think that is what it is.

Unfortunately this gentleman seemed to have his own ideas about butterfly appreciation at Borneo Highlands. He and his colleague were sweeping the overlook area with nets, something that isn't supposed to happen there. I suspected that, after decades of working on wildlife trade issues, I was finally having a field encounter with my first batch of wildlife poachers. I asked them as nonchalantly as possible what they were doing, and was informed, in a surly tone, that they were collecting specimens for a Japanese museum. Which one, I asked in a considerably friendlier tone, but I didn't get much of a response.  The collectors quickly moved off into the forest. I reported the whole thing to Sarawak Forestry, who told me that no one had been issued collecting permits for butterflies at Borneo Highlands. I won't say more in case the gentleman in the picture (or his lawyer) is reading this, but will refer those interested to my old pal Jessica Speart's excellent book Winged Obsession (on butterfly poachers and their prey) instead. 

Sarawak: Future Guides at Borneo Highlands

In 2010, I gave a presentation to the Sarawak tourism industry on the benefits of bringing birding tourism to the state.  It has been a particular point of pride for me that my words appear to have been heard, and one of the results has been an ongoing series of training workshops for potential birding guides in Sarawak.  I was, of course, delighted to be invited to participate in the 2014 workshop, and especially so because it was to be held at The Borneo Highlands Resort in the Penrissen Mountains, long one of my favourite places.  This is the entrance, seen as we started up to the highlands on August 23, 2014.

Here are some of the views as we drove up out of the tropical lowlands to the resort itself.

Once we arrived, a good deal of our sessions were indoors, but there were, of course, several field excursions for the trainees over the two days of the workshop.

Much of our field work took place in the shadow of Gunung Penrissen, near the Indonesian border.

The mowed stretch along the overlook let the birders keep an eye on the forest behind the viewpoint, and watch for other birds flying over border or moving through the shrubbery on the steep slope running down from the Indonesian side.

It was hard to avoid, of course, simply enjoying the view from the overlook itself...

Even if, among the expanses of forest, we could see alarming signs of deforestation on the Indonesian side.

Here, Dr. Hans Hazebroek, one of our instructors and the author of National Parks of Sarawak and other vital books of Bornean natural history, trains his spotting scope over the border, while his wife and MNS stalwart Cynthia Lobato checks her camera.

The overlook is a good place for birds of prey, and in particular Blyth's Hawk-Eagle (Nisaetus alboniger).

Bird photography can be tricky here; birds like this Bornean Brown Barbet (Caloramphus fuliginosus) tend to stay in the treetops.

That is also my excuse for the less-than stellar quality of this photo of a Black-and-yellow Broadbill (Eurylaimus ochromalus).

I had more luck (although this was, after all, a training session for birders) using my spare moments to photograph other things.  Borneo Highlands is, for example, full of interesting and often beautiful plants.

This is a climbing pandanus (probably a member of the related genus Freycinetia, most of whose members are climbers), its stems stretched out against the sky.

The graceful curve of a fiddlehead always makes an attractive (and because it holds still and allows close approach, cooperative) subject. 

 

Borneo Highlands is a good spot for squirrel-watching. A number of interesting species live up here, including this Black-eared Pygmy Squirrel (Nannosciurus melanotis) working over the bark of a large overhanging limb. 

Low's Squirrel (Sundasciurus lowi) is one of a group of similar small squirrels. I am calling this one a Low's based on its whitish belly and fairly short, bushy tail. Like the Black-eared Pygmy Squirrel, it is an animal of lowlands and foothills, and may be near the upper end of its altitudinal range at Borneo Highlands. 

This plain little butterfly, perched on a lichen-covered rock, is obviously one of the blues, but I do not know which one. 

Over our lunch break I had time to check out the ponds and rivulets around the lodge for dragonflies and damselflies. The lily pond outside the dining hall was also home to Green Paddy Frogs (Hylarana erythraea). 

The two common local Trithemis species were much in evidence, including the deep pink T. aurora. 

Trithemis dragonflies, though (as the lower photo shows) they frequently perch on vegetation, seem to prefer rocks, especially if they border watercourses. 

This is the other common species, the dark blue Trithemis festiva. 

I found numbers of the common blue dragonfly Orthetrum glaucum...

...as well as a few of its strikingly bicoloured cousin Orthetrum pruinosum, particularly around heavily-vegetated small ponds by the roadside. 

The small rocky streams cross-crossing the golf course at Borneo Highlands are good places to look for damselflies. One of the commonest is Euphaea subcostalis, which you can almost almost find perching on a convenient rock on the streambed...

...or on a bit of vegetation nearby. It appears to be the only Euphaea in the area. 

Heliocypha biseriata is also common here, as it is at lower elevations. 

Vestalis damselflies almost invariably perch on the edges of leaves, whether overhanging the water or not. Identifying them to species pretty much requires having them in hand, preferably with a stereo microscope handy,  to check out details of the genitalia. These two, both apparently females, seem quite different in colour, but I'm not sure how useful that is in putting a name to them - on checking out photos on the internet of the three Vestalis recorded at Borneo Highlands, amnicola, atropha and beryllae, I have found photos of both all-green and bronzy insects labeled as the same species (and besides, Rory Dow, the expert on the subject, says that the amnicola from Borneo Highlands may actually be something else). So Vestalis spp. they will have to remain. 

We had planned to end our first day with a night excursion, but the weather had other ideas. Before the rain drove us back to the lodge, though, we did find this highly iridescent little snake crossing the pavement. According to Hans Breuer (based on a look at these photographs) it is one of the reed snakes (Calamaria sp). 

Our aborted night walk notwithstanding, an overnight at Borneo Highlands is something I always enjoy - in part because I know that the next morning I will be greeted by scenes like this. My account of our second day, though, will have to wait for the next post.