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Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part six: 2019

Discussion in 'Asia - General' started by Chlidonias, 7 Dec 2019.

  1. Batto

    Batto Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    A very good point, which can be extended beyond TBD. Take the puumala orthohantavirus as an example; cycles of epidemics in SW Germany in the last decade have been connected to rainy weather seasons that furthered beechnut production, which led to a population increase of bank voles and other rodent vectors of the virus, with the result of more apparent human cases. Back in the days, people would have been unable to understand why the disease "appeared" in one year but not in the next.
     
    Last edited: 7 Dec 2019
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  2. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I honestly never associated Europe with tick diseases, and especially not England. What would one wear for ticks? I might have to start doing whatever that is, and get some of Batto's special tick-removal tweezers, on my next trip (although the tweezers wouldn't be available in New Zealand).
     
  3. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    When I was in India on my last trip I was talking to a girl at the place I was staying in the Little Rann of Kutch. She mentioned Trump and I scoffed "there's no way he will win the election". She looked at me a bit strangely and said "he did get elected... he's been President for months now..."

    I had to scrape my jaw up off the floor with a spatula.
     
  4. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    Plenty of sheep on pastoral land and upland moors and heaths - perfect tick territory!

    Long trousers and thick socks - so not so great for tropical Asia ;)
     
  5. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    That's fine. Basically leech socks would also work as tick protection then, except better.
     
  6. Batto

    Batto Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Long trousers and shirts impregnated with tick repellent solutions. You can get tick removal tools on Amazon, too.
     
  7. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    DAY TWO - the one with the antechinus


    At 6am I was back out on the train to Warriewood. Now that I had a full day in Sydney (because I stayed overnight rather than flying in on this day) I could easily fit Warriewood in again in the morning and then do Centennial Park in the afternoon. The latter was supposed to be an excellent birding location but my choice of visiting both turned out to be the best one as I saw a lot more at Warriewood than I did at Centennial Park.

    I had left my pack at Elephant Backpackers in their "luggage storage". I wasn't that happy about doing so as their "storage" area was just a shelf sitting out in the open, and given the number of random people who appeared to be wandering in and out of the building I wasn't overly confident in finding my bag still there when I came back.

    I was, of course, also a bit wary of ticks when I got to Warriewood. Turned out I was right to be wary because it was afterwards when I went to the chemist in the shopping centre that I found out about the Red Meat Allergy from the previous post. "Ticks are a real problem on the northern beaches" the chemist had said helpfully. Might be even more helpful to put up warning signs for the ignorant tourists like me. They put up signs in Australia for crocodiles and snakes; why not for ticks? If I was the Australian Prime Minister it would be my most important initiative.

    Warriewood Wetlands is a great birding spot. The reserve is traversed via a large loop of boardwalks and tracks, partly through woodland and partly over open water and through reedbeds, so there is a range of habitats. Then on the other side of one of the bordering roads is the Irrawong Reserve where there is another trail through wet forest to the Irrawong Waterfall, and beyond that the trail continues through dry forest to (eventually) come out at Ingleside Park. I didn't go that far, but it would be easy to spend an entire day birding in the forests here. Later, when organising my bird lists back home, I discovered that I had been to Warriewood before. That was back in 2007 and I had completely forgotten about it.

    On the short walk from the hostel to the train station I saw six species of birds (Silver Gull, Feral Pigeon, Rainbow Lorikeet, Australian White Ibis, Noisy Miner, and Galah) and on the bus to Warriewood another four (Common Kookaburra, Greater Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Little Wattlebird, and Australian Magpie).

    At Warriewood it wasn't long before I came across the flying fox camp. I checked them all out in case there were any Little Red Flying Foxes amongst them, but they were all the usual (resident) Grey-headed Flying Foxes. The former species is migratory and even though they are common I have never seen one because I've never been in the right places at the right time of year. It was probably still a touch early in the year to see any this far south anyway, but it was worth a try. On my way home in a few weeks I would be going through Brisbane, and in theory I would then be in the right month to see some.

    The tracks upon which I was walking were covered in little holes where Long-nosed Bandicoots had been digging during the night. They must be really common. I reckon that if a person was here at night they would be seeing a bandicoot about every ten metres. Well, I mean not the night that I was there of course, but on any other night.

    The birds sighted were a bit of a mix due to the track moving between different habitats. Apart for the regular water birds I also saw Brown Falcon and Spangled Drongo, and a few little bush birds like Eastern Yellow Robin, Rufous Whistler and White-cheeked Honeyeater.

    The Irrawong Reserve was also nice, although I only saw a few birds there. Highlights would be several Eastern Whipbirds, a flock of Red-whiskered Bulbuls, and a Brown Gerygone building its nest. Past the waterfall the trail started to climb sharply. Up here the bandicoot diggings were even more numerous, although it probably wouldn't be a fun trail to try and do in the dark. There weren't a lot of birds on this section of track - King Parrots and Kookaburras were most obvious - so I headed back down again.

    The random timing of the decision to return at this point proved to be a lucky stroke, because on the way down I came across a Brown Antechinus foraging amongst fallen palm fronds. I knew this species was found here but it wasn't a target species because "mouse-sized animal" and "finding" are difficult concepts to match up together. Antechinus are part of the so-called "marsupial mice" group, tiny carnivores which seem to be active at any hour. They're not actually shy at all, so long as one remains quiet, so I even managed to get some photos. The one below is the only photo in the Zoochat gallery of a live animal.

    [​IMG]


    I took the train, tick-free, back to the city and caught a bus directly from the station to Centennial Park. I had debated whether to use my afternoon birding-time at Centennial Park (where there are supposed to be Powerful Owls) or at Bicentennial Park (where there are supposed to be Red-necked Avocets), and the former won out. I reasoned that despite all the mentions of avocets for the latter park they were probably only transients there rather than residents, whereas the Powerful Owls at Centennial Park were not only resident birds but roosted in reliable spots and were kept tabs on by local birders.

    Centennial Park is huge. If you look at a map of Sydney you'll see how big it is. I came in at the north entrance at Oxford Street, from where a wide road leads directly south to the cafe and Banksia Way, which is where the Powerful Owls generally roost. I had been checking all the trees along this road on the way through, just in case (some had nest boxes for the owls in them). At Banksia Way I dutifully scanned every tree with my binoculars. I could not see any owls. I wasn't sure how difficult the owls even were to spot. They are gigantic birds, basically like feathered gorillas (that may be slightly exaggerated), and photos I'd seen of them generally had them looking quite visible. I popped into the park depot at the end of the way to ask. The girl on reception was only filling in while the regular person was at lunch, but she told me the specific trees in which the owls usually roost, with the additional information that they hadn't been seen lately by the local birders. I had a look at the roost trees, no owls, then headed off to look for fruit bats instead.

    In the south part of the park is Lachlan Swamp, at one time the main water source for the city. There is a flying fox camp here, supposedly containing not only Grey-headed Flying Foxes but also Black and Little Red Flying Foxes. I couldn't find the camp, and it turned out I was too far south. Eventually I found where the bats were and wandered around amongst them for some time trying to see any that weren't Grey-headed Flying Foxes, without any success.

    I went back to the park depot and the new person on the reception told me that the Powerful Owls hadn't been seen at all for a number of weeks. She did tell me where a pair of Tawny Frogmouths were roosting, but I couldn't find them either because the directions were a bit too obscure.

    So Centennial Park was a bit of a waste of time which with the benefit of hindsight would have been better spent by staying at Warriewood, or by going to Bicentennial Park instead. Nevertheless, I saw exactly fifty birds species today and this brought my year-list to exactly one hundred birds.

    At 8.45pm my flight left Sydney and I was on the way to Singapore.


    [​IMG]

    Brown Gerygone at its nest, at Irrawong Reserve


    Animals seen today:

    BIRDS:

    Silver Gull Larus novaehollandiae
    Feral Pigeon Columba livia
    Rainbow Lorikeet Trichoglossus haematodus
    Australian White Ibis Threskiornis molucca
    Noisy Miner Manorina melanocephala
    Galah Cacatua roseicapilla
    Common Kookaburra Dacelo novaeguineae
    Greater Sulphur-crested Cockatoo Cacatua galerita
    Little Wattlebird Anthochaera chrysoptera
    Australian Magpie Gymorhina tibicen
    Welcome Swallow Hirundo neoxena
    Spur-winged (Masked) Plover Vanellus miles
    Spotted Dove Streptopelia chinensis
    Pacific Black Duck Anas superciliosa
    Purple Swamphen Porphrio porphyrio
    Brown Falcon Falco berigora
    Spangled Drongo Dicrurus bracteatus
    Superb Blue Wren Malurus cyaneus
    Grey Fantail Rhipidura albiscapa
    Rufous Whistler Pachycephala rufiventris
    Common Coot Fulica atra
    Willy Wagtail Rhipidura leucophrys
    Dusky Moorhen Gallinula tenebrosa
    Eastern Yellow Robin Eopsaltria australis
    Royal Spoonbill Platalea regia
    Australian Little Grebe Tachybaptus novaehollandiae
    Little Black Shag Phalacrocorax sulcirostris
    White-cheeked Honeyeater Phylidonyris nigra
    Red Wattlebird Anthochaera carunculata
    Bell Miner Manorina melanophrys
    Little Pied Shag Phalacrocorax melanoleucos
    Lewin's Honeyeater Meliphaga lewinii
    Red-whiskered Bulbul Pycnonotus jocosus
    Australian Brush Turkey Alectura lathami
    Eastern Spinebill Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris
    White-browed Scrubwren Sericornis frontalis
    Brown Gerygone Gerygone mouki
    Australian King Parrot Alisterus scapularis
    Eastern Whipbird Psophodes olivaceus
    Australian Wood Duck Chenonetta jubata
    Crested Pigeon Ocyphaps lophotes
    Pied Currawong Strepera graculina
    Common Mynah Acridotheres tristis
    Australian Darter Anhinga novaehollandiae
    Black Swan Cygnus atratus
    Grey Teal Anas gracilis
    Australian Raven Corvus coronoides
    Australian Pelican Pelecanus conspicillatus
    White-eyed Duck Aythya australis
    Magpie-Lark Grallina cyanoleuca

    MAMMALS:
    Grey-headed Flying Fox Pteropus poliocephalus
    Brown Antechinus Antechinus stuartii

    REPTILES:
    Eastern Water Dragon Physignathus lesueurii
     
    Last edited: 20 Jan 2020
  8. TeaLovingDave

    TeaLovingDave Moderator Staff Member 10+ year member

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    Because if they start warning for every dangerous animal, you end up with this situation per Terry Pratchett's Discworld series:

    Death held out a hand. I WANT, he said, A BOOK ABOUT THE DANGEROUS CREATURES OF FOURECKS-

    Albert looked up and dived for cover, receiving only mild bruising because he had the foresight to curl into a ball.

    After a while Death, his voice a little muffled, said: ALBERT, I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD GIVE ME A HAND HERE.

    Albert scrambled up and pulled at some of the huge volumes, finally dislodging enough of them for his master to clamber free.

    HMM... Death picked up a book at random and read the cover. "DANGEROUS MAMMALS, REPTILES, AMPHIBIANS, BIRDS, FISH, JELLYFISH, INSECTS, SPIDERS, CRUSTACEANS, GRASSES, TREES, MOSSES, AND LICHENS OF TERROR INCOGNITA, " he read. His gaze moved down the spine. VOLUME 29C, he added. OH. PART THREE, I SEE.

    He glanced up at the listening shelves. POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT?

    They waited.

    IT WOULD APPEAR THAT-

    "No, wait master. Here it comes."

    Albert pointed to something white zigzagging lazily through the air. Finally Death reached up an caught the single sheet of paper. He read it carefully and then turned it over briefly just in case anything was written on the other side.

    "May I?" said Albert. Death handed him the paper.

    "'Some of the sheep, '" Albert read aloud. "Oh, well. Maybe a week at the seaside'd be better, then."

    WHAT AN INTRIGUING PLACE, said Death. SADDLE UP THE HORSE, ALBERT. I FEEL SURE I'M GOING TO BE NEEDED.
     
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  9. birdsandbats

    birdsandbats Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    For ticks just wear long pants - this deters them well enough. You will have to check yourself afterwards, but doing this will dramatically decrease the number of ticks that try to bite you.
     
  10. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    And thus was born the reason behind Chlidonias later being found stumbling through the deserts of New Mexico just wearing long pants.
     
    Last edited: 8 Dec 2019
  11. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    DAY THREE - the one with the otters



    The flight from Sydney was scheduled to leave at 8.45pm and to arrive in Singapore at 3.15am, and the plan then was to go animaling all day from dawn to as far into the night as it took to find a pangolin. Then there would be a few hours sleep before getting up at dawn to repeat it all over again. There wasn't a whole lot of sleeping going on in these first days of the trip. I'd only had about five hours sleep over the past forty hours or so before the flight out of Sydney so I was hoping to get some sleep on the plane, and I intended to catch a few winks at the Singapore airport after landing while waiting for the buses to start running. As it happened I did get maybe four or five hours on the plane, which apparently was enough because when I was off the plane I couldn't sleep at all. Instead I just sat around and wrote trip-notes until about 5.30am.

    From earlier visits to Singapore I already had an EZY-Link card (one of the public transport cards I discussed previously in the thread). I wasn't sure if it was still valid, so I went to the train station inside the airport and found that there was SG$2 remaining and that the card wouldn't expire until March next year. I topped it up with another SG$20 which was an estimate based on how many buses and trains I had planned to take over the next two days. All the routes and fares for Singapore transport are available online making it possible to work this out fairly accurately, but I ended up making some small changes in my itinerary as I went and hence didn't need to take as many buses as expected. When I left Singapore I had about SG$8 left on the card.

    My first wildlife site to visit would be Pasir Ris park. Landing in Singapore at 3.15am might seem like an annoying thing but actually it was perfect for me. Pasir Ris is only twenty minutes by bus from the airport, the airport bus goes right past the park, and they start running at 5.30am. I could leave my pack in the bag storage facility at the airport, go birding all morning, then just go back to the airport, pick up my pack, and head off to the hostel I had pre-booked. And Pasir Ris at dawn is a well-known site for Smooth-coated Otters. Honestly, I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to fly into Singapore at 3am.

    I arrived at the park at dawn and walked along the road to the bridge over the canal which runs along one side of the park. This was supposed to be a good otter viewpoint. I looked up the length of the canal in the morning gloom. First animal I saw was a Grey Heron. Second animal I saw was a Smooth-coated Otter. As easy as that.

    There was a whole group of the otters; five of them in fact. They were quite far away, all the way up at the next bridge, but they were on the bank rather than swiming away in the opposite direction so that was a good start. I started heading that way through the park but before even getting halfway the otters all up and left. Fortunately they didn't go back into the canal. Instead they started loping across the park itself, eventually ending up in a fishing lake in the centre where, utterly ignoring all the early-morning fishermen, they started fishing for their own breakfast. It turned out that these otters are clearly quite used to people. I was standing within a couple of metres of them, on the shore, while they chased fish right in front of me. Sadly, with the relatively low light levels and the otters' constant activity none of the photos turned out properly. I did get some partly-usable photos as they left the fishing lake and headed back to the canal.

    [​IMG]


    Apart for the otters Pasir Ris is supposed to be a very good birding location, and so it proved to be. There are quite a range of habitats in the park, including regular parkiness, mangrove forest, sandy beaches, canals, ponds, and patches of "forest". Chickens are roaming about everywhere. I had a recollection that Pasir Ris was a site for genuine Red Junglefowl, and these did look like real wild ones as opposed to the variety one gets amongst feral chickens, so I was going back and forth on whether to include them on my list of wild birds for the day. Much later when I had some internet access I checked up on them and while there is a local movement to have them recognised as genuine Red Junglefowl the official view is that they are feral domestic stock.

    There is a list of birds seen this day at the bottom of this post. The most interesting was right after the otters had left. I spotted a group of birds fly into the very top of a tree and when I got my binoculars on their landing spot I saw a small green parrot. It had its head facing away from me so I could only see its back. My first thought was Indian Ringneck, simply because it looked entirely green. Then it lifted its head and I realised that it was a Monk Parakeet, which is from South America and is a species I had totally not expected to be seeing here. Singapore is full of introduced species - at least seven of the birds I saw today (and two of the reptiles) are not native here - but I didn't even know that Monk Parakeets were amongst them. Honestly I wouldn't have counted them at all, but I followed them as they flew from the tree and saw that they had a nest. Looking online, they have been nesting at Pasir Ris for at least two years, and the species has been recorded nesting elsewhere in Singapore as well. So I'm counting them.

    [​IMG]

    The photo above is the nest of the Monk Parakeets, built in one of the towers which support spotlights (to light the park at night). This species is unique amongst parrots in building an actual nest, a massive structure of sticks in which they nest colonially. Other parrots nest singly in holes, usually in trees.

    A little bit later I saw three further introduced parrot species: a single Lesser Sulphur-crested Cockatoo feeding in a tree, a flock of Moustached Parakeets (a very common introduced species in Singapore), and lastly Indian Ringneck.

    [​IMG]


    My accommodation in Singapore was a place called Jamilla Boutique Inn, booked through Agoda before leaving New Zealand. I usually stay at Cozy Corners when in Singapore but it really is a dump, so I decided to try somewhere new this time. The four-bed dorm was surprisingly cheap for Singapore (NZ$38 for two nights). Surprisingly cheap? Wait, suspiciously cheap is what I meant to say. The photos on Agoda looked nice, the descriptions sounded nice, there weren't many reviews of it but the ones that were there were fine. Yeah, no, not so much. The name "boutique inn" should have been a giveaway when used for a hostel. Later I found it had been through a few name changes, hence the lack of bad reviews. Change the name every few months; avoid the bad reviews haunting you.

    Calling it a "boutique inn" is like finding a dead alley-cat on the road and entering it in a cat show as a pedigree Burmese. More like "poo-tique inn". It's what I fondly like to call a "death-trap hostel", where if there was a fire then everybody dies because the rooms have no windows and the only escape is via long corridors lined with the doors of similarly windowless rooms. I'm always uncomfortable staying in places like that.

    The check-in time for Jamilla wasn't until 3pm, so I stayed at Pasir Ris until around noon-ish, then picked up my bag from the airport and caught a train across the city to Lavendar station. The street names on Google Maps aren't entirely accurate so I spent a little longer wandering around trying to find the hostel than I should have done, but I got there eventually, and after depositing my pack in the room I went off and caught a bus straight out to the most important place in Singapore - the place where I would be looking for a pangolin.


    Pangolins are a little bit like unicorns for mammalwatchers. Everyone wants to see them but nobody can find them. There probably is more chance of finding a unicorn than a pangolin for most people. I've been going to Asia for over ten years and have never seen one. Lintworm went to Asia once and saw one. Never have congratulations been offered through such gritted teeth before.

    Singapore seems like an unlikely place as being the best locality for finding wild pangolins, but I think that it might be in exactly such a position. There is still a surprising amount of forest on the island, Singapore's wildlife laws seem to be strong and enforced nowadays, and there have also been releases of smuggled pangolins here. Apparently the BBC even did a documentary on one of the Singapore sites of these releases (at Bukit Timah). Unfortunately for mammalwatchers most of Singapore's protected forest areas are off-limits after dark, with the potential for hefty fines if caught. However, Vladimir Dinets found a pangolin on a public track through a patch of forest which is outside the reserves and can therefore be visited during the night. Since he was there a number of other mammalwatchers have visited the trail and also seen the pangolin. I don't actually know how "guaranteed" it is to see a pangolin there because rarely do you read reports of failure from animal-watchers. If you believe only trip reports then everybody has success at all times when looking for animals. Having said that, I know a lot of people have seen pangolin there first try, including lintworm, so that's where I was going.

    The trail was on the other side of the island from where all the hostels are clustered in the south. I had specifically looked for a closer accommodation but there didn't appear to be much outside that main hotel area. By bus it was an hour away. The driver didn't know the name of the road I needed. I told him I knew where I was going which wasn't exactly true, but I knew how long it should take to get there (from the bus schedules available online) and just kept an eye out for street signs.

    I only had an hour or so before dark when I reached the trail. I had expected there to be a lot of bird activity at the end of the day, but literally the only bird I saw was a Greater Racquet-tailed Drongo. This meant that I successfully photographed every bird I saw at this location.

    [​IMG]


    Unusually there were a lot more mammals around than birds. Wild Pigs were common, with several groups being encountered, as well as Slender Squirrels and Greater Tree Shrews. While trying to photograph one of the tree shrews (unsuccessfully) I was surprised by an large orange mammal clambering up a sapling behind the pandanus grove in which the tree shrew was foraging. As strange as it sounds, my first thought was that it was some sort of possum. I mean, I knew it wasn't because I was in Singapore and not Australia, but that was the immediate impression. It turned out to be a Colugo, looking a lot brighter in person than it appears in the photo below (I think because this was at the end of the day when the light was fading, so the camera didn't pick up the colours properly). It must have been roosting almost at ground level for some reason.

    [​IMG]


    Lintworm had given me a rough idea of how far along the trail he had seen his pangolin. Right at the mid-point between his hundreds-of-metres estimates I had found a burrow. Right in the face of a sand-bank, easily visible from the trail. Was it a pangolin burrow? I couldn't think of anything else ground-dwelling that was the right size, and it had been used fairly recently by the look of the soil sprayed outside the entrance. Once dusk was falling I went back to the burrow to keep watch.

    The trail was apparently a regular running and cycling track. Even after dark there were people rushing past on foot or wheels, all of whom seemed really surprised to come across a random person just standing on the side of the trail in the dark. Despite the sun having gone down I could just see the burrow entrance well enough to tell whether anything might be moving. Nothing did. After a good while of staring at a sand bank in the dark I started doubting whether this was a good strategy. I didn't actually know if it was a pangolin burrow and even if it was I didn't know if it was occupied or whether the pangolin might have more than one burrow. What if I was standing here like an idiot while a hundred metres further along the track a pangolin was just hanging out in plain view? Eventually I broke and decided to wander up and down the trail. Two hours later I was getting a bit sick of seeing nothing. I mean, not just no pangolins, but no anything. Not a mouse or mouse deer was I seeing. Also all the stars had been obliterated and thunder and lightning were promising me that it was about to start pouring down. Spotlighting sucks.

    One more pass along the stretch of the trail and I would give it up. I reached the burrow for about the seventh time that night; no pangolins. The most annoying thing about trying to find a pangolin is that their eyes are so small that they don't give off any eye-shine. Even spiders have prominent eye-shine but not a pangolin. Instead you have to listen for them, which is something I'm not good at. Twenty metres past the burrow, I heard "something" crunching in the dead leaves covering the ground just near the path. Something not too big but not too small. I scanned the area from which I thought the noise was coming and saw nothing. I scanned the areas from which I didn't think the noise was coming, and saw even more nothing. I scanned again, and the noise stopped. Had it been spooked by the light? I stared at the patch of forest lit by the torchbeam... more staring ... I suddenly realised I was staring directly at the pangolin. Probably the only reason I realised this was because the pangolin started moving. I had no idea that the scale-covered body would merge so imperceptibly into the dead leaves covering the ground. It may as well have been invisible.

    Normally I don't take my camera out when I'm spotlighting. I don't like using flash on animals, and nocturnal sightings are often so brief that I'd rather look at the animal than try to get a photo. This night I did have my camera though, because the chance of anyone believing I had actually found a pangolin was slim unless I had proof. Unfortunately I discovered that I needed one hand to hold the torch, one hand to hold the camera, and one hand to focus the camera. The pangolin didn't seem bothered by me and had kept on foraging around in the leaves while I was trying to work out my one-hand-short dilemma. I suspect that the reason I saw the pangolin so well was precisely because I couldn't take its photo. It probably knew that. So well did the pangolin know it, that it walked out onto the trail, literally a couple of feet away from me and stopped, daring me to figure out my camera. I took its photo. I had the camera on the wrong setting. The pangolin got bored with my incompetance and scuttled off the other side of the trail, shuffled noisily down the slope and disappeared. If I had come along five or ten minutes later than I did, I wouldn't have even known it had been there.

    I haven't uploaded the pangolin photo to the gallery because we have rules about being able to tell what the animal in a photo is. In fact the photo actually makes my story even less believable, because it really does look like I just took a bad photo of a picture on a computer. It was so close to the camera that only the head and forefeet are visible, and it is out of focus and just awful all round. Still, regardless, that made three new mammals in three days! (That's Sugar Glider on day one, Brown Antechinus on day two, Sunda Pangolin on day three). Would I get a fourth on day four...? Well, no.

    The last bus back to town was near midnight - in my trip-plan I had been contemplating whether I would just stay out all night looking or go until 11.30-ish and then try again the following night. Now I didn't need to do either. I got back to the "boutique inn" right as the rain was starting. It would continue for pretty much the next week or so.

    Tomorrow I would be going to Jurong Bird Park.



    Animals seen today:

    BIRDS:
    Grey Heron Ardea cinerea
    Striated Heron Butorides striatus
    Germain's Swiftlet Collocalia germani
    Monk (Quaker) Parakeet Myiopsitta monachus
    Feral Chicken ["Red Junglefowl"] Gallus gallus
    Pink-necked Green Pigeon Treron vernans
    Collared Kingfisher Todiramphus chloris
    Oriental Magpie-Robin Copsychus saularis
    Asian Koel Eudynamys scolopacea
    Oriental White-eye Zosterops palpebrosa
    Sunda Pigmy Woodpecker Dendrocopos moluccensis
    White-breasted Waterhen Amaurornis phoenicurus
    Red-whiskered Bulbul Pycnonotus jocosus
    Olive-backed Sunbird Nectarinia jugularis
    Yellow-vented Bulbul Pycnonotus goiavier
    Black-naped Oriole Oriolus chinensis
    Javan Mynah Acridotheres javanicus
    Spotted Dove Streptopelia chinensis
    House Crow Corvus splendens
    Common Mynah Acridotheres tristis
    Brahminy Kite Haliastur indus
    Lesser Sulphur-crested Cockatoo Cacatua sulphurea
    Moustached Parakeet Psittacula alexandri
    Common Sandpiper Actitis hypoleucos
    Pacific Swallow Hirundo tahitica
    Dollarbird Eurystomus orientalis
    Indian Ringneck Parakeet Psittacula krameri
    Little Egret Egretta garzetta
    Stork-billed Kingfisher Halcyon capensis
    Feral Pigeon Columba livia
    Tree Sparrow Passer montanus
    Zebra Dove Geopelia striata
    Greater Racquet-tailed Drongo Dicrurus paradiseus

    MAMMALS:
    Smooth-coated Otter Lutrogale perspicillata
    Plantain squirrel Callosciurus notatus
    Wild Pig Sus scrofa (vittatus)
    Colugo Cynocephalus variegatus
    Common Tree Shrew Tupaia glis
    Slender Squirrel Sundasciurus tenuis
    Sunda Pangolin Manis javanica

    REPTILES:
    Asian Water Monitor Varanus salvator
    Red-eared Terrapin Trachemys scripta elegans
    Garden Lizard Calotes versicolor
     
  12. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    Hey, it worked! I think it worked. The pangolin photo. Believe it or not. Ew, it really is awful - it looks like the upload didn't work properly, but that's just how bad the photo is...
     

    Attached Files:

  13. Vision

    Vision Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Really impressive story, of an incredible species! I may or may not be seriously considering saving to go back to Singapore now... :p

    I think everyone that has gone wildlife-watching has had this same issue at one point! It definitely rings true to me, I have very similar pictures of a few highlight species that were suddenly sitting right in front of me with my camera that just wouldn't focus. Frustrating, but at least it's still a very obvious pangolin pic!

    When I was in Vietnam I only did two sessions of spotlighting but both of them were together with a friend - at first it seemed like doing it together was a bit of a hindrance (you can never completely sync footsteps, so you make twice the sound you'd usually make, and twice the amount of eyes doesn't seem to quite make up the difference) but after reading this it seems like it can help as well. When we did eventually find something, my friend could point the torch at it while I could take pictures!
     
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  14. MRJ

    MRJ Well-Known Member 15+ year member Premium Member

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    Yep that is an awful photo but congratulations, what a thrill! As you know I was on the same bridge at dawn a couple of days later and didn’t see a single otter, although I did see one in the afternoon the next day. The vagaries of wildlife watching.
     
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  15. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    DAY FOUR - the one with the Philippine Eagles


    The main reason I had come to Singapore on this trip was to try and find a wild pangolin, but the secondary almost-as-important reason was because Jurong Bird Park had some new birds of great rarity, namely Spix's and Lear's Macaws (which arrived in November 2017) and a pair of Philippine Eagles (which arrived this year, in June), and the park itself was due to close permanently at some point next year because they are building a whole new bird park over next to the zoo (see this thread for more on that: WRS Mandai expansion plans).

    On my plan I would be going to Jurong first thing in the morning (opening time is 8.30am), spend maybe three hours there to see the new birds, then bus from there to Bukit Timah to look for wild birds, and then in the late afternoon catch another bus from there to the pangolin trail (I naturally had assumed that I wouldn't have found a pangolin on the first night). Only the first of those things happened. Instead of three hours I was at Jurong for eight hours - and it rained for six of those eight hours, at times so heavily that it flooded the paths completely. Good thing I did find that pangolin yesterday!

    On arrival I headed first for the Wings of Asia aviary, a walk-through aviary with no fewer than seventeen additional aviaries inside around the edges. Two hours later I was still in there. Jurong doesn't cover a huge area but it sure does take a lot of time. There are birds packed in everywhere, and trying to find and I.D. the unsigned birds can be a fun-slash-exasperating experience. Just in the Wings of Asia aviary alone there are over a hundred species of birds.

    It was while in this aviary that the first rain-showers started. I was hoping they would pass over, but instead they intensified. On my first pass of the bird of prey aviaries I could get no photos of the Philippine Eagles because the rain was too heavy. On the second pass there was a break in the weather, but I still couldn't get any photos because of the positions that the eagles chose to occupy right at the top of the cage. Similarly with the Lear's Macaws, on the first pass all the photos I tried to take were useless because they are in a glass-fronted aviary, and it was running with sheets of water. Fortunately for the second pass around, the glass had some clear spots, and I also got some photos through the side mesh. Frustratingly, the Spix's Macaws remained completely absent, presumably hidden inside their indoor quarters. Several returns to the aviary during the day all came up empty.


    I don't know if anyone here likes lists of zoo animals, but I have put a list of all the birds on display at Jurong Bird Park (as of my visit) here: Jurong Bird Park species list, September 2019 [Jurong Bird Park]


    [​IMG]

    The photo above is a Lear's Macaw. There are photos of other birds from the visit in the Jurong gallery (here: Jurong Bird Park - ZooChat) including such gems as Coleto and Green Broadbill.


    I added a few birds to the year list while at the park ("a few" equals four, a low number which is probably a combination of spending all my time looking into aviaries and not up into trees, and the torrential rain for most of the day). One of the species I added was Painted Stork. I have always resisted counting the Painted Storks in Singapore and Malaysia because in both countries the populations stem from free-range zoo birds (from Singapore Zoo and Zoo Negara respectively), and I have been visiting both countries since a time when any birds seen "in the wild" were just wanderers from the zoo colonies. However they are now well-established in the wild and I have decided to add them to my lists.



    Animals seen today:

    BIRDS:
    Javan Mynah Acridotheres javanicus
    Feral Pigeon Columba livia
    House Crow Corvus splendens
    Tree Sparrow Passer montanus
    Germain's Swiftlet Collocalia germani
    Painted Stork Mycteria leucocephala
    Spotted Dove Streptopelia chinensis
    White-breasted Waterhen Amaurornis phoenicurus
    Cattle Egret Bubulcus ibis
    Lesser Whistling Duck Dendrocygna javanica
    Grey Heron Ardea cinerea
    Black-crowned Night Heron Nycticorax nycticorax

    MAMMALS:
    Plantain Squirrel Callosciurus notatus
    Common Tree Shrew Tupaia glis

    AMPHIBIANS:
    Black-spined Toad Duttaphrynus melanostictus
     
  16. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    DAY FIVE - the one with the ... um, with the squirrels I guess


    With the long pangolin search over after the first night, and Jurong Bird Park having been visited, I was off to Malaysia. First wildlife stop would be the Panti Forest just outside the town of Kota Tinggi, which is about an hour from the border entry point from Singapore. My main reason for going there was to try and spot Banded Leaf Monkeys. I have seen these in Thailand (of the subspecies robinsoni, at Kaeng Krachan) but I haven't seen the subspecies down here, which is the nominate femoralis (found in Singapore, where there are only a few dozen remaining, and southern Malaysia). I was hoping that not only would I see them but also be able to photograph them well enough to be able to add them to the Photographic Guide of Old World Primates thread.

    It was only about nine minutes walk from my hostel in Singapore to the bus stop on Queen Street for the Causeway Link Bus CW2. This is the best bus to take to the border as it only has four stops - the Queen Street terminal, Woodlands checkpoint (i.e. Singapore immigration), JB Sentral checkpoint (i.e. Malaysian immigration), and Larkin Bus Terminal (from which you can then take buses to other parts of Malaysia). There was no rain this morning fortunately. I caught the bus at 7.30am and twenty minutes later was at the border.

    As earlier mentioned, entry for New Zealanders into Australia is very simple - fill in the arrival card, scan your passport at a self-check machine, and walk out of the airport. Immigration into Singapore is just as easy, although with an actual person who stamps your passport, but again one just walks right out without any further checks. It's kind of disconcerting actually, because I'm sort of looking around thinking "did I go through the wrong door and someone is about to stop me?" Exiting Singapore through Woodlands is even more of a breeze - there weren't even any Customs officers there. It was literally scan passport at the automated gates, walk on through, then go and queue at the bus stop to continue on to the JB Sentral checkpoint. Not even an exit stamp in the passport. On the Malaysian side there were again no checks, just an entry stamp in the passport, and then walk down to where the buses congregate to take people on to Larkin Bus Terminal.

    The first Malaysian bird for this trip was a White-bellied Sea Eagle gliding over the Malaysian end of the causeway (Singapore and Malaysia are so close together that there is just a bridge across the strait). Second bird was a Black-naped Oriole outside the JB Sentral immigration building.

    I had half-heartedly been thinking about visiting the Johor Zoo when I got into Malaysia. It's only about 500 metres from the JB Sentral checkpoint and I haven't been there before, but I have a feeling it would not be as easy to walk there as one might think. Even on the satellite version of Google Maps it wasn't clear which routes would be open to foot traffic between the checkpoint building and the gardens in which the zoo is situated. I suspected one would have to walk right around the perimeter to get there. Taxi might be the best option, and wouldn't be expensive. However I ended up not wanting to go walking all round a zoo in thirty-odd degrees with a pack on my back. On some future visit to Singapore I might do it as a day-trip.

    I was at Larkin by 9.10am. Buses to Kota Tinggi seem to go every ten minutes. As it turned out, they go from Larkin back to Johor Sentral, which is right next to JB Sentral (the Malaysian border checkpoint which I'd come through earlier) where they sit for twenty minutes before heading off to Kota Tinggi. So I could have just caught a bus directly from there and saved some time. The ride from Johor Sentral to Kota Tinggi takes an hour.

    It took me a while to find a hotel upon arrival in Kota Tinggi - they are really scattered about the town. The one I ended up at was called Gest Inn, in a 55 Ringgit room. My first ATM transaction at Agro Bank was rejected - it's always a worry when the first attempt at an ATM on a trip fails. The ATM at Maybank next door worked for me though.

    The only way to get out to the Panti Forest if you don't have your own car is by taxi. It's only about twenty minutes from town, but there was a little misunderstanding on where I wanted to go so it took longer than required. The driver took me instead to the start of a hiking trail up to the top of Gunung Panti (the mountain), which is on the other side of the forest from the Bunker Trail which is where I actually needed to be. In such a situation both parties are probably in the wrong. The driver hasn't make it clear than he didn't understand your directions properly, and you obviously haven't made your instructions clear enough for him. Because he had to drive twice as far as expected he said the price would have to go up from 50 to 80 Ringgits. I accepted this, partly because I felt it was probably my fault, and partly because it was a return price and I wanted to make sure he actually did come back and pick me up at the end of the day!

    The Bunker Trail is named after the World War II concrete bunkers on either side of the road just before reaching the trail - they aren't framing the trail itself as trip reports would have you believe. The trail itself was once a narrow paved road but now only traces of concrete and paving stones remain and it is mostly covered over by some sort of low creeping bamboo-like grass. The trail isn't long, maybe 700 metres, and it ends abruptly at a dusty busy logging road. There are no longer any side-trails. The site has been turned into an official bird sanctuary (Suaka Burung Panti, or the Panti Bird Sanctuary), although whether it has any actual protection I'm not sure. As is often the case in southeast Asia, a whole complex of buildings was erected at the entrance - visitor centre, restaurants, dorm rooms - and soon after just abandoned. All the buildings are locked up, the beds and desks inside shrouded in plastic, and everything has been left to fall apart.

    It was about 2pm when I got there. It was very hot, and the birding was excrutiatingly slow to start with. Slender Squirrels were very common, but no other mammals were seen all day (apart for a lone Crab-eating Macaque seen from the taxi on the way to the forest). The rain came in at around 3pm, and it absolutely hammered down for an hour. I waited it out inside one of the old guard huts. There were Hill Mynahs in the tree nearby, enjoying the rain. All the birds became more active after the rain although the numbers still weren't very high. I wondered how much poaching goes on here.

    At the end of the afternoon I met a couple of Danish birders who'd been there all day. They said that their birding had also been hard work, and expressed surprise at how short the trail was and how few birds were in evidence, in comparison to the praise heaped upon the site in trip reports. In fact they had suspected they were at the wrong place entirely, but they had met some local birders earlier in the morning who assured them this was indeed the famous Bunker Trail. We shared the opinion that the only way anyone would be seeing all the trogons and pittas and other suchlike birds along here, is if they were all being taped out into the open.

    I stayed until 6pm. I had originally been considering doing some spotlighting here but there were road signs for elephants and tapirs all along the highway from town, and the driver had made a point of telling me about how often he sees elephants along the road and the number of people they kill locally. Once I was on-site the amount of elephant dung along the track also made it seem unwise. None of it was freshly-deposited but I was still wary all afternoon. They are probably nocturnal here because they would be being persecuted by the plantation workers, but that only makes them more dangerous if you do run into them.

    I had expected that the afternoon might be slow birding - mornings are always better in the tropics - so I'd see what tomorrow would bring. Hopefully it would bring Banded Leaf Monkeys!


    Animals seen today:

    BIRDS:
    [Singapore]
    Tree Sparrow Passer montanus
    House Crow Corvus splendens
    Javan Mynah Acridotheres javanicus
    Feral Pigeon Columba livia
    Spotted Dove Streptopelia chinensis
    Striated Heron Butorides striatus

    [Malaysia]
    White-bellied Sea Eagle Haliaeetus leucogaster
    Black-naped Oriole Oriolus chinensis
    Javan Mynah Acridotheres javanicus
    Feral Pigeon Columba livia
    House Crow Corvus splendens
    Spotted Dove Streptopelia chinensis
    Tree Sparrow Passer montanus
    Common Mynah Acridotheres tristis
    Germain's Swiftlet Collocalia germani
    Asian Glossy Starling Aplonis panayensis
    Greater Green Leafbird Chloropsis sonnerati
    Orange-bellied Flowerpecker Dicaeum trigonostigma
    Cream-vented Bulbul Pycnonotus simplex
    Hairy-backed Bulbul Tricholestes criniger
    Greater Hill Mynah Gracula religiosa
    Orange-backed Woodpecker Reinwardtipicus validus
    Purple-naped Sunbird Hypogramma hypogrammicum
    Blue-winged Leafbird Chloropsis moluccensis
    Striped Tit-Babbler Macronous gularis
    Chestnut-breasted Malkoha Phoenicophaeus curvirostris
    Asian Brown Flycatcher Muscicapa dauurica
    Red-eyed Bulbul Pycnonotus brunneus
    Tiger Shrike Lanius tigrinus
    Buff-vented Bulbul Iole olivacea
    Raffles' Malkoha Phoenicophaeus chlorophaeus
    Common Tailorbird Orthotomus sutorius
    Asian Paradise Flycatcher Terpsiphone paradisi
    Pacific Swallow Hirundo tahitica
    Asian House Swift Apus nipalensis

    MAMMALS:
    Crab-eating Macaque Macaca fascicularis
    Slender Squirrel Sundasciurus tenuis

    REPTILES:
    Asian Water Monitor Varanus salvator
     
  17. DavidBrown

    DavidBrown Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Why does this happen do you think? Does someone make an investment thinking it will make them some money and then they just give up if it doesn't immediately?
     
  18. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    DAY SIX - the one with the leaf monkeys, briefly


    The taxis in Kota Tinggi run out of the bus station. The driver from yesterday had said he didn't start work until 9am. I was hoping he might start earlier because then I wouldn't have any issues with being taken directly to the Bunker Trail (now that he knew where I was going). Generally in this part of the world the sun comes up at about 7am and goes down at 7pm, a pretty exact twelve hours. "Okay, I will be here at 6.30am and meet you" he had said. I knew this meant that no, he would not be there at 6.30am. This might work out better though, because I had a distinct feeling that he would try and charge me 80 Ringgits today as well, whereas if I used a different driver I should be able to get the "real" price (50 Ringgits).

    I went to the bus station at 6.30am. Of course all the taxi drivers knew each other so they all knew where I was going and how much I'd paid the previous day. There was no way to bargain them down because there was no other way for me to get there, and they knew it. I paid 80 Ringgits.

    I reached the Bunker Trail just after 7am, expecting lots of early birds. There were none. Well, not none, but close to it. The whole day was a trial. At least there was only a little bit of rain today, which didn't cause any inconvenience.

    When you turn off the highway at the bird sanctuary sign, there is a somewhat-crumpled barrier arm where the taxi stops. Then there is a wide concrete road leading a hundred metres or so to another barrier arm where there is an abandoned guard post (the one I had sat in during yesterday's downpour). The abandoned complex is next, and then the trail itself starts beyond that. There are a couple of signposts for other trails from the resort but they don't appear to exist any more.

    This morning, on my walk between the two barrier arms at the start, a langur hurled itself across the road between the trees. It was gone in a second but there was another one coming up behind it, which I got the binoculars onto. It was a group, I don't know how many because most had already left, and I saw some of them rather poorly and much too briefly, certainly too poorly and briefly for any photographs. However it was well enough to see that they were Banded Leaf Monkeys. There are two langur species here, the Banded Leaf Monkey and the Dusky Langur. Apparently both are common in the Panti Forest so you need to see them at least well enough to see their general colouration and, especially, the colour of the tail. The Banded Leaf Monkeys are almost entirely black apart for the pale belly, and the tail is fully black whereas in the Dusky Langur the tail is pale grey. I ran up the spot where the monkeys had been crossing, and saw a few more glimpses through the trees as they continued on their way. It was a disappointingly brief sighting but I thought I'd see lots more during the day. Nope. Those were the only ones I encountered.

    I did see a lot of White-handed Gibbons though, which was a surprise. I mean, I knew they were here so I wasn't surprised to see the first one, but I was surprised to see that they appeared to be so common. Gibbons are often targeted by hunters (especially in the vicinity of plantations and logging areas) and they are easy to find because they are large and noisy. Also the previous afternoon I hadn't even heard any, whereas this morning their songs filled the air.

    Other mammals were Slender Squirrels (only a few, in contrast to yesterday afternoon when they were everywhere), Common Tree Shrews, and an excellent pair of Cream-coloured Squirrels jumping across the trail between the treetops, so big that when the first one jumped for an instant I thought it was a macaque!

    So six mammals today, including the Banded Leaf Monkey which was one of my "target mammals" for the trip. Birds were a different story. The few seen today were mostly repeats of yesterday - there were only five species I didn't see again today, although I did see eight species that I didn't see yesterday. But the total for the day was only 26 species.

    I had an afternoon siesta in a shelter which had been partially dismantled to fuel peoples' campfires around it. Probably poachers. The shelter was situated at the edge of a little clearing, and whole time I was in it nothing moved in the surrounding forest except some dragonflies and butterflies.

    Back on the trail I met a bird-wave which included a Checquer-throated Woodpecker. I'd seen the woodpecker a couple of times already in the morning but not well enough to get a firm I.D. I think a lot of the birds I was seeing on both days were the exact same individual birds over and over, as the groups always contained the same species mix.

    Today was the only day I had pencilled in for the Bunker Trail (the visit yesterday afternoon had been a bonus visit because I had the time), and the next day I would have to move on again. The bird list was much smaller than I had been anticipating but I had a flight booked between Kuala Lumpur and Thailand in about a week so I had to keep to a schedule. Plus I wasn't going to keep paying 80 Ringgits for taxis. On this short trip I think my daily expenditure was higher on average than on long trips because every day I was paying for long-distance buses or taxis or whatever, whereas on long trips those costs are spread out over longer periods, bringing the average-per-day down. I haven't actually worked out the costs-per-day yet - I will do that when I've finished the thread and see what they say.

    Just on the subject of costs, today I checked my bank balance to see how much this trip ate into my next-trip-savings. My only real living costs are rent, food, and buses; if I'm on a trip while still paying rent, as one has to do for short trips, then the costs for food and transport are basically just transferred to a different country but accommodation is duplicated (i.e. rent at home, hotels in the other countries). Because I was still getting paid out of annual leave, I was hoping that not too much would come out of my actual savings. So when I checked how much money I had on the day I left and how much I had on the day I got back, I was quite pleased that the difference was only $175.


    Animals seen today:

    BIRDS:
    House Crow Corvus splendens
    Javan Mynah Acridotheres javanicus
    Asian House Swift Apus nipalensis
    Feral Pigeon Columba livia
    White-rumped Shama Copsychus malabaricus
    Asian Glossy Starling Aplonis panayensis
    Germain's Swiftlet Collocalia germani
    Greater Hill Mynah Gracula religiosa
    Orange-bellied Flowerpecker Dicaeum trigonostigma
    Hairy-backed Bulbul Tricholestes criniger
    Red-eyed Bulbul Pycnonotus brunneus
    Cream-vented Bulbul Pycnonotus simplex
    Olive-winged Bulbul Pycnonotus plumosus
    Forest Wagtail Dendronanthus indicus
    Asian Brown Flycatcher Muscicapa dauurica
    Little Spiderhunter Arachnothera longirostra
    Grey-chested Jungle Flycatcher Rhinomyias umbratilis
    Purple-naped Sunbird Hypogramma hypogrammicum
    Buff-vented Bulbul Iole olivacea
    Greater Green Leafbird Chloropsis sonnerati
    Striped Tit-Babbler Macronous gularis
    Yellow-bellied Bulbul Alophoixus phaeocephalus
    Checquer-throated Woodpecker Picus mentalis
    Chestnut-breasted Malkoha Phoenicophaeus curvirostris
    Spectacled Bulbul Pycnonotus erythrophthalmus
    Blue-winged Leafbird Chloropsis moluccensis

    MAMMALS:
    Banded Leaf Monkey Presbytis femoralis
    White-handed (Lar) Gibbon Hylobates lar
    Common Tree Shrew Tupaia glis
    Slender Squirrel Sundasciurus tenuis
    Cream-coloured Giant Squirrel Ratufa affinis
    Plantain Squirrel Callosciurus notatus
     
    Last edited: 21 Dec 2019
  19. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I don't really know. In somewhere like Cambodia the places which are built-then-abandoned tend to be Chinese (casino resorts and the like) - the Cambodian government makes money of course, by selling the Chinese companies the land or the permits, and I'm guessing the Chinese company simply makes enough money from it in some way in the initial period that it doesn't need to be a long-term investment.

    In Malaysia these places seem to be government builds rather than private, though. The impression I always get is that they build expensive "resorts" at tourist locations - usually national parks - and then simply don't maintain them. Perhaps it is someone in some political position who can use it to say "look what I've accomplished" and then nothing else needs to be done with it, so it gets forgotten. Or maybe it is just that they overestimate how much traffic it will bring.
     
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  20. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I just worked it out and, yes, much higher than normal. Not including airfares or travel insurance, the on-the-ground costs were NZ$72.32 per day on average. However eight of the 33 days were in Australia which is much more expensive than southeast Asia, which will have skewed the average.
     
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