For our tour description, itinerary, past triplists, dates, fees, and more,. See this triplist in with media only on page 1. One of the foremost (of many!) highlights of our tour was watching a pair of beautiful Whitehead's Trogons in the humid cloud forest of Kinabalu Park. Endemic to undisturbed montane forest above 900m in N Borneo, this species was but one of an amazing 6 species of trogons we saw on the trip; that's all the trogons of Borneo! This male was photographed above the Silau-Silau by participant Bob Rodrigues. The island of Borneo is a magical place. K C May - [The Kinshield Saga 02] - The Wayfarer King (html)/content.opf Peach Orchard Press Beyonders, evil beings that materialize without warning from the realm of chaos. FIELD GUIDES BIRDING TOURS report for our 2014. Several of the birds we saw were carrying mouthfuls of nesting. As with other Old World fruit bats. 7 Program do. On- Page SEO means more now than ever since the new Google update: Panda. No longer are backlinks and simply pinging or sending out a RSS feed the key to getting Google Page. Though acre after acre of the Malaysian state of Sabah is continually being converted to oil palm plantations, there are still vast swaths of primeval forest, cloaked with some of the tallest trees on earth. For sixteen days, we explored luxuriant, tangled lowland jungle and hill forest, venturing even into the heady heights of its great canopy, thanks to a series of fabulous canopy towers and walkways. Via tidal rivers and tiny, meandering streams, we poked into otherwise inaccessible seasonally flooded forest near Sukau. For the final quarter of our stay, we climbed into the cool highlands of the spectacular Mount Kinabalu massif, where we wandered through a beautiful cloud forest with its masses of mosses and ferns and epiphytes. Throughout it all, there were so many sights and sounds and experiences to enjoy. Our adventure began at Sepilok, where we spent several days recovering from our long flights and coming to grips with some of the more common lowland species. From the wonderfully sturdy towers and walkways at the nearby Rainforest Discovery Center, we watched an ever-changing cast of characters, including a Banded Woodpecker clinging for minutes to a nearby branch, a Black-bellied Malkoha rummaging through nearby foliage, a stunning male Violet Cuckoo displaying at close range, a Verditer Flycatcher that returned again and again to the same branch, a spiffy Black-and-yellow Broadbill that approached to within arm's length, and Red Giant Flying Squirrels sailing through the canopy at dusk. Along the trails below, we watched two male Fluffy-backed Tit-Babblers arguing over a (presumed) female (with much flaring of bright blue eyebrows and gular patches), a pair of Rufous-collared Kingfishers swinging on their viny perches, a tiny Rufous-backed Dwarf-Kingfisher perched beside a meandering stream, calling male Red-naped and Diard's trogons, a host of colorful sunbirds visiting a patch of equally colorful flowers, and a Large-tailed Nightjar hovering right overhead and then singing from a distant snag. En route to Sukau, we detoured slightly to visit the Gomantong Caves (which we would visit again in the coming days). Though most of the edible nests in the cave we toured had been harvested recently (resulting, sadly, in a lack of renesting Black-nest and White-nest swiftlets), we did see Mossy-nest Swiftlets sitting atop their distinctive moss-incorporated nests (they're too messy to warrant cleaning for bird's nest soup). And a host of additional highlights awaited us between the cave and the beginning of the Gomantong entrance road. Fortunately, our introductory birding in the tall rainforest forest was made easier by one of the sturdiest canopy walkways we've experienced: that at the Sepilok Rainforest Discovery Center. The Bristlehead Tower didn't yield any bristleheads this year, but we certainly found plenty of other things to look! (photo by guide Megan Edwards Crewe) GRAY HERON (Ardea cinerea) – One dropped in for a landing in one of the ponds on the outskirts of Kota Kinabalu, seen as we drove to our hotel on our final evening afield. Mountain Serpent-Eagles are tough to find some years; so watching FOUR birds at once, circling over our heads and uttering their wild screams, was a real treat. The dry-weather period we experienced probably contributed to our success with raptors. (photo by guide Megan Edwards Crewe) MOUNTAIN SERPENT-EAGLE (Spilornis kinabaluensis) – Our best looks at this scarce endemic came at the Kinabalu Park overlook, where a surprising FOUR circled over our heads, uttering their wild whistling screams.
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