Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part two: 2011

thanks, I am pretty pleased....


After the success of finding a Giant Rat, I felt really good about trying to now finally find a hanging parrot. Just out of Ruteng is a little village called Pagal and just beyond that is some roadside forest which is supposed to be a good site for both the Wallace's hanging parrot and the Flores green pigeon. In the morning I took a motorbike to the forest, and sure enough after only about ten minutes I found a green pigeon in the top of a tree. It was only one pigeon but one is enough, and I think a lot of people don't even find that many when on the island. I walked up the road and back for several hours but no more pigeons did I see, and no hanging parrots either. There were a number of red-cheeked parrots which are great birds that I like a lot, but of hanging parrots not a sign. Pagal was really the last chance on this trip for finding hanging parrots, so I'm going to be leaving Flores without them. Still, I saw the Giant Rat so that's half the battle won!

In the afternoon I took another motorbike to Danau Ranamese. I had planned on camping out here again for the night to look for the rat, but now I'd found one that wasn't really necessary. However there are also a couple of endemic owls in the forests by the lake so I decided to go anyway (and if I found another rat so much the better). The two owls here are the Wallace's scops owl and the Flores scops owl. The latter was only known from two specimens from 1896 until rediscovered in 1995. Marc had seen a Flores scops owl near the lake a few nights before and it had kindly perched out in the open until well into the morning allowing him to get some fantastic daylight photos. It was seeing those photos of this beautiful owl that made me want to see it (I'm not a huge fan of owling normally because I usually can't find them!).

I was going to try owl-hunting in the early morning rather than evening, so I only spent a couple of hours at the lake in the evening (hearing a Wallace's scops owl but not seeing it) then retired to my tent for the night. I got up again at 3am. I didn't really want to when it came down to it, but there was a Flores scops owl calling persistently from somewhere in the vicinity which eventually drew me out into the chill of the early morning. That owl was off in the jungle out of reach so I headed out to the road and walked uphill in the direction of Ruteng for about an hour to the place where Marc had photographed his owl. I heard another Wallace's scops owl on the way but it wasn't close enough to the road to be any good. At Marc's site I waited around for a couple of hours but no owls were even calling so I returned the way I'd come. Just at the concrete wall overlooking the lake a Wallace's scops owl flew across the road and over the wall.I rushed round behind it but the owl had vanished into the trees. I could hear it calling from down the slope but couldn't get to it. I saw it though, so that's good for me.

The other interesting thing that happened that morning was just by Marc's owl site, when something fairly largish dashed off the side of the road into the forest. I didn't see it but the sudden noise in the darkness gave me a heck of a fright! There happened to be a little trail right there, so I stepped inside and the whatever-it-was started hissing violently from the undergrowth. I still couldn't see it and I was a bit wary of what might happen if I tried to approach too close given the vicious sound it was making. I've never heard a macaque make those kind of noises and they should have all been asleep up in the tree-tops at that time of the morning anyway, so I think it may have been a giant rat. Its worth noting that in 2009 I was told that the giant rat can be dangerous when hunted because of its large teeth and savage disposition when defending itself. Whatever it really was, I never got to see it before it vanished into the night.

 

"Snakes: nature's quitters"

After last night's owl hunt, I returned to Ruteng about 8am, had some breakfast, then set off to the town of Lembor about two hours away (roughly halfway between Ruteng and Labuanbajo). Near Lembor is a place called Istana Ular, the "snake palace", a cave where apparently dozens or hundreds of pythons gather for some mysterious reason or other (they are there to eat bats of course, so not really so mysterious at all!). I found a bus just before 9am, sat in it for an hour or so till it decided to leave Ruteng, got into Lembor about 12.30, grabbed a motorbike guy and set off for the cave. This was about 45 minutes ride away, first along the highway (newly sealed so as smooth as an otter), then on a road that hadn't been re-sealed for quite a while, this then turning into a bad cobbled road, and this then becoming a very very bad road typical of rural Indonesia where it is made up solely of jumbles of rocks, making it not only very uncomfortable on the back of a bike but also meaning I had to walk most of the uphill (and steeper downhill!) stretches. The motorbike ride was followed by a half-hour walk down a steep hill and then up a river for a bit, although fortunately this was shallow.

Now, before my trips I do a lot of prep-work and research. Trip reports on the internet are always the first source for where to find the birds, and additional sites of interest are gleaned from books on natural history.For general information such as hotels, how to get between towns, that sort of thing, I use Lonely Planet. The Indonesian edition is not entirely trustworthy -- the prices are usually wildly inaccurate and quite a bit of the information is just plain wrong-- but its still the most useful resource out there. I probably first heard of Istana Ular in Lonely Planet but it is obvious the authors never actually visited the cave or they would have made more of the experience. All I can say about it is "wow!" Actually I can say a lot more than that, so I will!

From internet sites promoting Istana Ular I had formed an impression of a large (dry!) cave system filled with stalagmites and stalactites with pythons coiled everywhere. Its not quite as enjoyable as that. When we arrived at the cave entrance ("we" being myself, the motorbike driver, and some guy who had followed us all the way from Lembor), about ten people appeared from nowhere. One man whom I assumed to be the local headman offered a prayer to the snakes within the cave before we started, then two locals and I entered. Fortunately I had brought along one of my torches and my headlamp otherwise it would have been tricky because none of the locals had torches. The first thing you should know about the cave is that it is basically just a big tube worn through the rock by a stream. The second thing is that it is inhabited by hundreds of bats of several species, audible from outside they are so numerous. Just in from the entrance I paused to take a photo of my boots covered in a mixture of mud and bat guano (so I could say, look what I put up with to see these snakes!). The next step I took was a bit of a shock when I sank up to my knee. The entire floor area of the tube-cave was basically a river of semi-liquid guano!

One of the local guys had taken my torch and gone ahead to scout for snakes, wading along the wall to avoid the deeper middle section. I hadn't come all this way to back out, so I edged my way after him. Under the water's oily surface was a disgusting slurry of muck that flowed through my boots. Being a tube, the walls of the cave of course sloped downwards into the water -- I didn't know how deep the middle part was but I didn't want to slip and find out so it was slow-going. Everything above water was coated in slippery bat dung. Hordes of scuttling cockroaches covered over the walls, clouds of midge-like insects surrounded my headlamp and got sucked into my throat with each inhalation of breath, and strange insects like a cross between lice and flies crawled over every bit of exposed skin. We went further and further in with no snakes to be seen. It was incredibly hot and humid in there from all the fermenting dung I assume. There was so much sweat pouring off my face it was like I was standing under a shower. When we came out later I was literally drenched with sweat from head to toe -- well, head to knee anyway; knee to toe I was drenched in guano! Finally the guy in front spotted a snake up near the ceiling and we climbed a huge foetid pile of guano to see it better, crickets and cockroaches milling over our feet and scurrying up our legs. It was a reticulated python, and a beauty! It is notoriously hard to estimate the lengths of snakes but I'd say this one was about three metres. Not huge but not too bad either. I got a few photos but not many and only on my small camera because my hands were covered in guano from the walls and I don't think its good for cameras. With one snake found after forty minutes and no sign of any others I was ready to get out, so we waded back to the entrance.

As a tourist attraction I think Istana Ular leaves rather a lot to be desired. It is quite difficult to get to, and really only a die-hard nature nut would find it a good experience. I can't imagine most tourists going in there once they saw what was inside. Everybody on Flores has heard of Istana Ular and all can relate to you that there are many many snakes in there, from huge ones to little babies (also I heard the biggest one in there can fly, but I'm not sure how accurate that is), but I have yet to meet a Indonesian who has actually been there. I can't say I "enjoyed" the experience in the usual sense of the word, but it was certainly an education and at least now I know first-hand what a real full-on bat cave is like (answer: nasty!) and I won't be forgetting it in a hurry. Besides how many people have the bragging rights that they waded through knee-deep guano for forty minutes to see a reticulated python (a species which I have already seen in Sabah and Java as it happens)?

If I could only remember the name of that fatal disease you contract from visiting bat caves.....

 

I'll post some photos at some point. I got a total fluke shot of the python with a bat flying right past its head!

All the skin is peeling off my toes at the moment, which I think must be connected to the cave visit.....

 

ha, funny thing in Bajawa while waiting on the bus to Riung (see next post) a bemo passed by with the words Indiana Jones across the side. I would have loved to have got a photo of myself next to it but it was on the move so no luck

 

Riung - another reptile quest!

The week before when I was staying at the Seminary in Kisol, Father Fabi told me about some big lizards that could be found at Riung on the north coast of Flores which I thought sounded like they might be sail-finned lizards (Hydrosaurus). Another person who came visiting whilst I was there told me they were very common and anybody in the town could take me to see them (although he had never actually been to Riung himself, and neither had Father Fabi). I didn't think I would get to Riung, but then with the changes in my itinerary to eliminate Sumba and spend an extra week on Flores it turned out I had the time after all. After the excitement of visiting Istana Ular, I spent the night in Ruteng and the next morning took a travel car back to Kisol. I could have stayed in Bajawa en route to Riung but I liked the Seminary and its only two hours before Bajawa anyway. Father Fabi was absent and the girls who work at the Seminary doing the cooking and cleaning don't speak any English, but they were happy to see me back. Everyone seemed to have become sick while I was away and there was a lot of coughing all day. I had intended on going back to the forest to have another look for Flores hawk-eagle but it was just too darn hot so I did nothing instead. Because I was free I became the English teacher for the afternoon. The woman who lives across the road came over as well, and we all had lots of fun mangling both English and Indonesian. At the end of the day the woman from across the road had to leave, but before she did she finally plucked up the courage to ask if I had any medicine because she was sick with Typhoid....

The next morning I took the bus to Bajawa and then sat around in the city terminal till 1.30 waiting for the 1 o'clock Riung bus to leave. The way to Riung is three hours over what had at one point in its life been a sealed road, probably back when the Dutch first arrived, but now not so much. At least it wasn't one of the tooth-loosening rock-jumble roads so common over here. Inexplicably for the last half-hour the road is in pretty good shape with just the odd hole here and there. Its as if ten years ago they decided to re-seal the whole thing, got a fifth of the way before running out of money, then just went "oh well that will do for now" but forgot to come back later and finish the job.

Riung isn't really a town as such, more a spread-out village, and it has a surprising abundance of hotels and homestays. As I discovered this is because there's a popular diving/snorkelling site on a group of islands just offshore. Everyone I pass says "When did you get here? You need a boat?" "No I don't need a boat" "Yes you need a boat" "No I don't need a boat" "Yes you do" etc and so on.

The bus dropped me off at a place called Nirvana Bungalows where the asking price was 150,000 rupiah per night. I walked around a bit and found the Tamri Beach Homestay (not actually anywhere near a beach, mind) for just 65,000 a night. The price is right but unfortunately its not particularly near any food source. After a while I found a restaurant called "Murah Meriah" (say it out loud) which I liked because from my seat I counted no fewer than forty geckoes on the ceiling. It appears to be the only restaurant in Riung not attached to a hotel and it caters only to tourists because the locals wouldn't pay that amount for their food. The food is very good though. In Riung the roosters start crowing at 3 o'clock in the morning, and then at 5 o'clock all the dogs in the village begin a chorus of howling. By then its time to get up anyway.

When I first arrived at the Tamri Beach Homestay there were three English tourists there. I asked if they had seen any big lizards. "No....er, are you a big lizard enthusiast?" came the worried reply. I explained what I was there for, which made them think I was even stranger. I mean, honestly, who on earth goes looking for animals on their holidays instead of lying on the beach by day and drinking at bars by night? Mutually incomprehensible, that's what "normal" tourists and people like me are. Imagine if I'd told them about my search for the Giant Rat! The next morning I ran into one of the girls before they left. "Good luck with finding your big lizard" she said. I replied that because I couldn't get any good answers from local people I was just going to head out walking till I found some forest, and half the fun is in the search anyway. "Really?" she said, obviously more than a bit incredulous, "walking around in the forest all day is fun?"

Nobody in town could give me a non-contradictory answer about the lizards that supposedly occur here. Some said there were many, some said very few, some said there were none and I would need to go very far away to find any. I had drawn a sail-finned lizard to show people what I was talking about, but even when specifically pointing out the frill on the back most people were obviously still thinking I was asking about Komodo dragons (here, incidentally, they are still called buaya darat "land crocodiles", whereas in the west of Flores they are now ubiquitously known as "Komodos"). Anyway, I basically just went walking out of the village to see what I could find. The landscape here is all barren brown hills with scattered patches of scrub and palm trees, almost identical to Komodo and Rinca actually. I saw a few common open-country birds but the only reptiles were small skinks. On balance of answers people along the way gave me, I don't think there are any big lizards - agamids or monitors - left around Riung.

A few people on my walk, however, told me that there was another small village called Torong Padang about 8 (or 10 or 12) km away where there were Komodo dragons. I did want to see some mainland dragons so I thought I'd better go there and check it out after lunch. Unbelievably though, there wasn't a motorbike to be found to take me! None at the marketplace, and any passing by either already had passengers or they wouldn't stop. I tried for an hour and then gave up. Like the fox and his grapes, I decided that most likely if I did get to Torong Padang there wouldn't be any dragons there anyway and it would have been a wasted trip.

 

Flores to West Timor

So Flores is over and done with for the second time. I had a rough start, couldn't find any birds at all it seemed, but it picked up marvelously and I not only found a Giant Rat but also "cleaned up" most of the birds I still "needed" (I dislike that word "need" but its a birders term, so when in Rome...). The only ones now missing are that pesky hanging parrot, Weber's lorikeet, Flores scops owl, Flores hawk-eagle and variable goshawk. The tally of "new" birds is still low -- only 21 for the whole month to date in Sulawesi and Flores -- but that is what I was expecting because I've only been covering ground I already covered in 2009.

I took the bus from Riung at about seven in the morning, getting to Ende in eastern Flores about 12.30. Ende seems like a really nice town. It stretches in a ribbon along the shoreline and unless I just caught it on a good day it is situated just right to get a nice cooling sea-breeze, unlike (for instance) the hotter-than-Mayte-Carranco towns of Labuanbajo or Riung. I was planning on spending a bit more money on the Ende-to-Kupang ferry to get a shared cabin rather than Economy Class so I could be a bit more secure about my bags, but 2nd class was already full and 1st class was a bit more than I wanted to spend, so I again settled on the $12 Cattle Class (I mean, Economy Class). Sleeping here does always bring to mind the quarantine ships mentioned in the Will Smith movie I Am Legend ("those ships were never meant to be permanent"). I didn't stay in Ende, or even look around; I simply got off the bus, went straight to the Pelni office to get my ticket and then went to the terminal to wait a few hours for boarding time (5pm according to the ticket but the ship arrived at 7.30 and left port at about 10).

The boarding of the Ende ferry was even worse than that of the Makassar one. There were so many people that it literally took an hour to move from the terminal building to the ship, a distance of probably 100 metres. Shuffle a few steps, wait five minutes, shuffle a few steps, wait ten minutes. The reason became clear when reaching the ship where one narrow gangplank served to get passengers on and off at the same time. Once again it was just an insane crush of shoving yelling people. The ticket office earlier in the day had been the same, just a mass of people at the counter all pushing and thrusting money forwards, so many that nothing actually gets accomplished. Even stupider was at the terminal building itself when a desk was set up just before the ship arrived. One desk, two staff, and instead of forming two queues so everything goes smoothly all the people completely surrounded the desk like an angry bait-ball. It was simply ridiculous.

I got an alright spot on board, near some nice people so I didn't need to worry about my gear if going off to the toilet or where-ever. At 4.30 in the morning Muslim prayers were broadcast loudly throughout the ship, and somebody had thoughtfully brought a rooster on board as well, naturally, because if you don't have a watch then a rooster is the only feasible way to tell if its dawn! I couldn't go out on deck to endure the mind-numbing boredom of sea-watching because the ferry was overbooked and every square inch of deck was covered in passengers and their belongings, so I returned to my slave-rack inside and lay in a pool of sweat for the next ten hours watching the cockroaches run laps around the walls.

Getting off the ferry was the usual trial of chaos. Being a basically chivalrous sort of person it makes me angry seeing grown men pushing women around. There were two ladies ahead of me, one with a baby for crying out loud, who were just getting barged all over the place, so I stepped in behind them and blocked up the passageway so they could get off safely. What a nice guy I am. The people behind me did not seem impressed! At the gates to the terminal one small inset gate was funnelling out the disembarking passengers. Inexplicably the guards suddenly opened up the entire double gate and all the people massed outside waiting to board surged forwards into all the ones coming out. It was like the battle scene in Braveheart where the two armies just smash together. Indonesians are nuts!!

Outside the terminal was, of course, the madness of the bemo and motorbike drivers. I wanted a bemo because it would be cheaper (funds are getting tighter!). One chap took me to his "bemo" which turned out to be a bike so I walked away. Bizarrely, none of the bemo drivers would talk to me. I wanted to go to the Pantai Timor Hotel and they would say yes they go there, but as soon as I asked how much they just clammed up and refused me service. Only one actually gave me an answer and that was a ridiculous 70,000 rupiah. All the motorbike drivers were saying 100,000 because it was "very very far". Unfortunately for them I knew exactly how far it was and eventually got one down to 30,000. As it turned out the Pantai Timor was more expensive than I had been told, so I ended up at the Hotel Laguna where I stayed in 2009.

The next day I went birding.....

 

Bipolo

In West Timor there are basically three bird sites you need to visit. Gunung Mutis is quite far out but fortunately I had found all the birds I wanted there in 2009 so didn't need a return visit. The other two sites are lowland forest patches only an hour out of Kupang, and their names are Bipolo and Camplong. Unless you hire a car or bike to take you there, its impossible to get anywhere early here. The first buses for Bipolo and Camplong don't leave till around 7am, then they drive around for an hour or so picking up additional pasengers, and you eventually get to your bird-some destination around 9.30. As always, too, the bus terminal isn't particularly near town. There are bemos that go to the Oebobo terminal but I have never found out how to get them, so I always go by motorbike from the hotel. The bus you catch is heading for Soe. The ones to Atambua and Kefa both go the same way as well but the drivers are usually reluctant to admit it, probably because they don't want a seat being occupied by someone going such a short distance.

For Bipolo you get off the bus at Oelmasi, and then take a motorbike for about 15km to the forest which is next to the village of Bipolo. This is a very birdy place. Even as late in the morning as 9.30 the trees are filled with birdsong and activity. Last time I was here (in June 2009) the fig trees were fruiting which made it easy to find figbirds and fruit pigeons. This time (September) there were no figs but half the trees in the forest were in flower. It made it harder to find the fruit-eaters but there were honeyeaters by the bushel-load. Every species on the island was here in abundance -- Indonesian, streak-breasted, yellow-eared and black-chested honeyeaters and helmeted and Timor friarbirds.

The bird I was particularly after at Bipolo was the Timor sparrow, cousin to the more familiar Java sparrow. They can be tricky to find apparently, if only because they usually occur singly or in pairs rather than flocks, and I had missed them in 2009. After a good few hours in the forest, I headed towards the rice-fields. The scrubby area between the forest and the fields is the best place for the sparrows (and also it seems for sooty-headed bulbuls, which obviously got introduced to Timor after the Wallacea book was published). Just at the start of the scrubby area were a couple of big flowering trees alive with honeyeaters, sunbirds and fantails -- and right there at the front was a pair of Timor sparrows probing at the flowers! It couldn't have been easier! Not where I expected to find them, up in a tree, and certainly not what I expected them to be doing, but that's animals for you. After watching them for a bit I continued on to the rice fields to look for five-coloured munias but it was pretty windy, too windy for birding out there in the open, so I returned to the forest where I found a couple of Timor stubtails but nothing else new for the day.

 

Camplong

The next day I went to the forest at Camplong, which is only about 7km further up the road from Oelmasi. I got there the same time as at Bipolo (about 9.30) but in contrast here it was very quiet. It took a while before I found a bird I hadn't already seen the day before (orange-sided thrush) but it picked up a little as the day went on.

The ground here is covered in a thick layer of large and very dry leaves that make sneaking up on birds quietly impossible. There are a lot of cows using the forest for browse though, so my advice for visiting birders is to give up sneaking and instead just pretend to be a cow -- stomp as loudly and obviously as possible through the forest, holding your fists up on either side of your head with a finger up in the air like horns. If you every now and then say "mooo!" in a very loud and deep voice that will only enhance the illusion. Now I can't guarantee this technique will work because I didn't do it myself, but I certainly recommend it to others.

There are quite a few big strangler figs scattered through the forest at Camplong but none were in fruit. I did still see quite a lot of rose-crowned fruit doves which I was pleased with. I had seen one yesterday at Bipolo but it was such a short view I couldn't count it. A couple of bronze cuckoos were added to the list as well (Gould's and Horsfield's). The species most birders want to see here is called the black-banded flycatcher. Its a shy skulking bird of thick undergrowth like the tangled bamboo thickets that are everywhere here, and as I understand it few people see it without the use of tapes to lure them into the open. I wanted to see it the natural way, which was really a bit of a forlorn hope -- but then, I'm a bit of a forlorn guy. At midday I found a handy place to eat my lunch, where the roots of a strangler fig had formed a nice seating arrangement. As I took my chicken out of my bag a flash of reddish-brown off through the trees caught my eye. I thought it must be just another Arafura fantail but had a look anyway, and there in my binoculars was a male black-banded flycatcher!! Once again the Wallacea field-guide showed just how rubbish it is at depicting the birds. In real life it is just stunning, with a really bright reddish back and rich black head, not looking at all like a poorly-posed wooden cut-out. It was pretty active, flitting continuously from branch to ground to liana to ground as it foraged for insects, and I got to watch it for about five minutes before it departed. Great bird, now in my top favorite Timorese sights.

 

Bipolo again

On my third day I returned to Bipolo, getting there a little bit later than the first day, about 10am, but there was still a lot of bird activity. The original forests in Timor, before they got fragmented and the bird populations so reduced, must have been extraordinary places to visit. I managed to find a Timor figbird but only one -- it really is easier when the trees are fruiting! There were more sooty-headed bulbuls in the forest too. Because it wasn't windy today I could head out into the rice-fields to look for munias. Long-tailed shrikes, one of my favourite open-country birds with their clockwork tails, proved a worthy distraction along the way. Good thing I did get onto the fields today because there were quite a few Australian pratincoles out there (winter migrants from Australia, in case their name didn't give it away). These were my first pratincoles and great birds; always nice to get a new family started, especially when the first species is one so dapper! White-shouldered trillers were everywhere on the open ground which was a bit of a surprise (I thought the first one was going to be a pied chat as it flew up in a flash of black and white, until I got my binoculars onto it), there were a few white-faced herons here and there, and a number of black-faced woodswallows in the scattered palm trees.

The bird I was out here in particular for was the five-coloured munia, another kind of finch related to the Timor sparrow. They live on three of the islands I visited in 2009 (Sumba, Flores and Timor) but I hadn't seen a single feather. This trip I hadn't found any on Flores, and it seemed like I couldn't find any on Timor now either. There were birds a-plenty out here, just none of them finches! As I headed somewhat despondently back through the fields a flock of about twenty munias erupted from the grass and flew off. A few minutes later a little bit further on a group of six did the same. They looked like five-coloured munias but they didn't settle anywhere near enough for long enough for me to actually get a proper look. There's nothing worse than seeing what are probably the birds you're after but not being able to confirm and knowing that might be the only view you get. Luckily, after not too long I spotted a pair feeding on the ground not far from the path and could say yes definitely five-coloured munias. Funnily enough, in 2009 I saw all sorts of finches here -- zebra finches, black-faced munias, nutmeg finches -- but not a single five-coloured munia, whereas this visit apart for a single zebra finch in the forest this morning and the pair of Timor sparrows the other day, every finch here was a five-coloured munia. Funny old world it is when you're a birder.

Its been great revisiting West Timor because, unlike Sulawesi, everything here is exactly the same price as in 2009 meaning I don't need to go through all the hassle of finding out how much things should really cost; I just get on the bus or motorbike and hand over the 5000 or 10,000 note when I arrive where I'm going, no fuss. But, still, Indonesia can't let everything go so easily. The buses back from Camplong or Oelmasi all go to the Oebobo bus terminal by Kupang and then you take a bemo or motorbike to your final destination in the city. Anyone getting off the bus along the way is just dropped by the side of the road. But today the bus to Kupang was taking everyone direct to their door, going through every little village, so it took over two hours instead of the usual one for the trip. Then -- and this is where things went south -- after the last Indonesian passenger was dropped at their house the driver took the bus back onto the main road, pulled over, and said something like "OK this is where you get out"
"What, here?" I said
"Yes, get out"
"Where am I?"
"Get out"
"I don't know where I am"
"Get out"
"But where am I?"
"Get out"
He was getting angry because I wasn't getting out, so I got out, he drove off, and I was like "well this sucks!". Of course you can't really be lost for long in Indonesia if you're standing next to a road because every second motorbike doubles as a taxi. I had already recognised a girl at the counter of a shop across the road because the bus passed her shop every morning on the way out of Kupang, so at least I knew which direction to go in. I flagged down a bike and, yes, it was a LONG way to the hotel from where the bus left me.

I was only in Kupang for five nights, giving me four full days for birding. For the last day I decided to go back to Bipolo rather than Camplong. I still had a small list of birds I wanted to find and I thought it most likely I would find them at Bipolo. That morning, though, the Bipolo forest was like a graveyard. A birdless graveyard. It was an hour before I saw the first flame-breasted sunbird of the day. The first streak-breasted honeyeater, a bird that had been exploding from every bush and tree by the dozen the other three days, didn't appear for two hours! So no new birds on my last day in West Timor, not even any new trip birds. I did however see two really big solid skinks, one climbing a tree and one on the ground. I've been keeping a look-out for reptiles while in West Timor, especially blood pythons and spotted monitors, but these two skinks were literally the only reptiles I saw anywhere. I don't know what species they were but they must have been in the genus Eutropis. I haven't got a reptile list for Timor so they will remain a mystery for now.

So that's West Timor finished. I found three of the birds I was still looking for (Timor sparrow, five-coloured munia and black-banded flycatcher) plus a few extras, but none of the others on my list. Not surprisingly, all of those missing species are defined in the field-guide as being uncommon/rare or as being difficult to find (things like Timor green pigeon and buff-banded thicket-warbler).

 

Bali, armpit of Indonesia

The flight from Kupang to Bali was with Batavia Air whom I've never flown with before. I think Lion Air must be my favourite local airline but Batavia is alright too. Their drinks trolley was stencilled "Ukraine International Airlines". I was seated in the very first seat (1A) so I got handed an emergency evacuation sheet to tell me that I was required to assist in case of emergency. The sheet said something like "we only seat the most capable persons next to emergency exits". Judging by the state of the half-drunk fat lady in leopard-print sitting next to me they take their safety concerns seriously. The sheet also said you could ask to be re-seated if you don't think you can be of adequate assistance. I was contemplating asking to be re-seated anyway because everyone in my immediate vicinity was an Australian of the loud boorish Bali-visiting type for whom fun is holding competitions to see who can projectile-vomit the furthest and who on the plane make fun of the air hostess' English as if she can't hear them.

There were cave swiftlets and fork-tailed swifts swirling round the airport at Bali which was a nice introduction. I got a taxi (after a major struggle getting one at a decent price -- Bali really does suck) and went to the Bali Manik Hotel where I stayed in 2009. The price has gone up from 80,000 to 100,000, and I really don't remember it being such a dump. Maybe its gone downhill in the last two years. Also the palm tree where the nutmeg finches were nesting has been chopped down!

Early tomorrow morning I fly to Kuala Lumpur and get straight on a bus to Taman Negara where my success at finding tapirs will be astounding to all.


And now I am completely up to date with the trip!!!!

 

Thanks. It will be a while to the next post though. I'll be in Taman Negara for about a week, so the next time I'm near a computer will be around the end of September I expect.

 

Taman Negara - all tapired out

With Indonesia finished for this trip I was heading for Malaysia to look for tapirs in Taman Negara, the country's foremost national park. The name Taman Negara itself literally translates as "national park". If you don't know what a tapir is, imagine a pig-like creature but the size of a small cow, with a short trunk like a mutilated elephant, and the black-and-white colouration of a giant panda. You can't make this stuff up! Of course if you don't know what a tapir is you're probably on the wrong forum......

Of course I had to start with a travel day. I got up at 3am to get to the airport in Bali at 4am for the 6am flight to Kuala Lumpur, arriving there at 9am. I stopped by the airport McDonald's for breakfast where placing my order was like being served by brain-dead monkeys. Then there was a one hour bus ride into KL Sentral, followed by a short monorail ride to the Pekeliling bus terminal. I got there at noon, just in time for the 12.30 bus to Jerantut, three hours away. Once there I had a bit of a wait for the last bus of the day at 5pm, heading for Kuala Tahan, the village at Taman Negara. I got to my final destination at 6.30pm, with nothing left to do for the day but check into the Tembeling River View hostel, have some food and sign up at the LBK Restaurant for a "Night Safari" (a drive through the oil palm plantations outside town to look for nocturnal wildlife).

It has been raining a lot in Taman Negara lately. The river was higher than I'd ever seen it (this being my third visit to the park) and it just kept rising. On my last day it was so high that the shoreline was entirely covered and to get onto the floating restaurants where the river-crossing boats leave from, I had to wade to their gangplanks like an animal, risking the contraction of Bilharzia like an animal, and then put my shoes back on like an animal....well, that last one maybe not so much like an animal.

It was raining on and off most of the way from Jerantut, and naturally enough it rained during the Night Safari too. There were six other people taking part. I was, of course, the only one with binoculars and when the driver saw them he suggested I should sit up on the roof with the spotlighter where I could get the best views rather than in the back of the 4-wheel drive with the other people. It pretty much rained the entire two hours we were out and we all got thoroughly soaked. Once in the palm plantations I soon spotted a barn owl perched on a frond. Nobody seemed overly impressed, it was just an owl, and the driver scared it off anyway by driving straight at it too fast. Not long after the spotlighter picked out another "owl" on top of a palm. When I pointed out that it was actually a Blyth's hawk-eagle I immediately became the trip's "biologist". As probably everyone on here knows, any time you show even the slightest hint of interest in animals beyond the normal "oh my god a monkey!" you get asked if you're a biologist. It wasn't actually birds I was on the Night Safari for though, it was leopard cats. I'd only seen one wild cat before, a flat-headed cat on Borneo's Kinabatangan River, and while that is a most excellent first wild cat to have seen it would be nice to get some more under my belt. Leopard cats are really common in southeast Asia and being an adaptable species, the rodent-filled palm plantations are ideal habitat for them. Sure enough it wasn't too long before I saw a youngish leopard cat bound onto the road ahead. It didn't stay on the road for long though, because the driver immediately sped up and raced towards it as if trying to run it down, and it scampered up the bank and slunk off into the undergrowth. That seemed to be the main technique: spot an animal and drive as fast as possible towards it so it ran off and nobody got prolonged views. That was unfortunately the only leopard cat of the night (probably due to the rain) but one of the guys in the back noticed a common palm civet in one of the palms -- really it did seem like the spotlighter shone the torch all over the place like a madman but it was us passengers actually finding most of the animals. I really wished I'd brought along my own torch. The civet wasn't on the road so the driver didn't get to try and run it over, instead he just stopped and we all got excellent views. Being a considerate fellow I shared my binoculars around so everyone could enjoy.

The last animal of the night was found by the spotlighter, a snake on a palm frond just by the road. "Paradise tree snake," he said confidently. "Oh! Really?" I said enthusiastically, because that's one of the so-called "flying snakes" and I've always wanted to see one. I needed a closer look because all I could see were pieces of white belly through the leaves, so I jumped off the vehicle and pulled the frond down and around so everyone could see it (remember I was the designated "animal guy"). "It's not poisonous, you can grab it," encouraged the spotlighter, but the snake wasn't a paradise tree snake at all and while it looked like a species of bronzeback (which are non-venomous) I really didn't know and I'm not stupid enough to pick snakes I can't identify! Later back at the hostel I looked it up in one of my books, and it was a painted bronzeback.

The place in Taman Negara to see tapir is the Kumbang Hide. In the morning I went to the park HQ to book four nights stay in the hide. They were a bit surprised anyone would want to stay four nights there but that was fine. Now I had to get a boat upriver. The boat costs 120 Ringgits one-way and I was expecting to have to carry the cost alone, but back at the hostel I discovered that one of the guides was taking a group of four French people up there that very morning and I could join in on the boat for just 30 Ringgits. Talk about luck! The drop-off point for the boat is just half an hour up the river at a place called Kuala Terenggan which was built as a resort about twelve years ago. No tourists showed up and it was abandoned after about six years. Now all the buildings are just sitting there decaying. From Kuala Terenggan its only an hour's easy-but-muddy walk to the hide. Alternatively you can walk all the way from Kuala Tahan but that's 5 to 7 hours and who wants to do that? The French group were only staying one night, as almost everyone does, and were keen to see a tapir, but as the night went on one by one they gave up and went to sleep until I was the only one left. I'd been up for over twenty hours the day before (from 3am all the way through to the end of the Night Safari at 10.30pm and finally bed about 11pm) and then from 7am that morning so by midnight I was falling asleep at my post. I had another three nights to go, so I packed it in and went to bed without a single animal having shown up. It was thundering down for most of the night though, so that may have had something to do with it.

The next day, after a very late start, I tried some casual birding in the forest around the hide but it was too late in the day and there weren't many birds active. More importantly, it had rained so much on the Night Safari that my binoculars had all fogged up inside and I could barely see through them. I gave up and went back to the hide where I made do with identifying a few easy birds in the trees outside the viewing window. By the next day the binoculars had cleared up so that was alright.

On my second night three guys turned up to stay. Two didn't know what a tapir was and one didn't understand the purpose of a hide. They were quite enthusiastic about seeing a tapir once I explained what one was, but by 8.30 all of them were asleep. I wasn't really too sure of the proper approach for seeing tapir. I had had a red filter on my torch (a very high-tech one made from red cellophane held on with a rubber band) but had lost it out the window on the first night. I decided that rather than just randomly turning the torch on and off in the dark hoping there'd be a tapir there, because that would just be stupid, it would be less disturbing to have a continuous light shining over the clearing (fingers being crossed of course). Just before 10pm two big red orbs of eyeshine suddenly appeared in the trees to the right of the waterhole in front of the hide. I turned my torch on them and there was a tapir! It wasn't the best of views because it was half-obscured by the undergrowth but I could easily tell what it was. The tapir hung around in the bushes for about five minutes but seemed reluctant to come out into the light, even when I turned off the torch, and after a while it left. Ten minutes later I picked up some eyeshine from the left of the pool, but that animal also declined to show. Then, just on 10.30 an adult tapir with an almost full-grown young one trailing it walked out from the left into the clearing, down the stream, looped back up to the right and off into the forest. Some eyeshine a few minutes later was either one of them or the first one back again. To say I was ecstatic would be an understatement. Kumbang Hide is supposed to be pretty reliable for tapir so long as you stay a few nights, but as we all know animals are anything but reliable when you're actually looking for them (or at least when I'm looking for them!). I didn't think I'd do much netter that night but thought I'd wait for at least another hour. Just half an hour later another tapir appeared from the bottom of the clearing, coming up the stream, and spent the next five minutes wandering around in the clearing in the torchlight. Absolutely fantastic! This one was about the size of the young one from earlier but was alone so may have been a fourth individual. I went to bed very happy. Amazingly, the next morning when I got up just before 9am, there was a tapir standing at the pool in broad daylight. I grabbed my camera and managed to get off a flurry of shots before it strolled back into the jungle. Now that was more than I'd hoped for! Who else can say they have Malayan tapir as first-animal-of-the-day?! One photo is here: http://www.zoochat.com/743/malayan-tapir-tapirus-indicus-238726/

On the third night there were five other people in the hide. The first tapir arrived at 8.30pm so everybody got to see it. Two people then went to bed and three stayed. Two tapirs (presumably the adult and young from the previous night) showed up at 9.30 but didn't like the light and never really came properly into view, but there was another adult on the scene as well, so for the next half-hour between one and three tapirs were in or around the clearing at the same time. These were the only tapir of the night, but I got up again at about 4.30am and there were two adult tapirs in the clearing. One left straight away but the other stayed put for the next ten minutes browsing.

On the fourth night, my final night, there were eight people including a family with a little kid of about 5 or 6. The first tapir turned up at 8.45pm, the next at 10.00, the third at 10.10 and the last of the night at 10.30. Again everybody there got to see a tapir (except the little girl who was already asleep). This was actually the best night so far because apart for the third tapir, all the others (probably the same individual returning) were completely unconcerned by the light. When the one at 10.30 showed up he stayed in the open for twenty minutes, half of which was spent browsing on bushes only about ten metres from the hide. So close I could see his tongue through the binoculars!

So, over three nights (the first night doesn't count because no tapirs showed up) I saw a minimum of four individual tapirs in thirteen separate sightings, three of which were of two animals at the same time, and one was at 9am in the morning. Couldn't ask for more really! If you want to see wild Malayan tapirs, go to the Kumbang Hide!!

It wasn't all tapirs at the hide though. There was a friendly pair of Sunda black-banded squirrels that lived nearby who would come to the windowsills for food. A troupe of white-thighed leaf monkeys passed by in the morning and back in the afternoon on one of the days. On the way to the boat (a free ride back with the family!) I saw a pair of white-handed gibbons. There were also rats in the hide, very attractive red ones. I wanted to get some photos to see if I could get an ID for them later so I put out some food as bait. A girl in one tour that passed through asked if it was for birds. You should have seen her face when I said it was to attract rats!

There were also insects, it being the jungle and all. Every night there would be swarms of thousands of little flying things around my torch-beam. I don't know what they were but it felt like clusters of needles being dragged over my skin. I ended up covered in flea-like bites all over my forearms, neck and face. I think the Malaysians must have invented flying fleas.

[in unrelated news, the colony of mites that established an outpost on the sole of one of my feet after the visit to the Istana Ular bat cave in Flores, have now all died out. I guess human isn't as palatable as bat. Good on them for trying though!]

Because this post has rambled on for long enough I'll talk about birds in the next one.....

 

The birding at Taman Negara started around the Kumbang Hide. I really just sat in the hide and watched out the viewing window but the place is so birdy that even that was good enough for me. The best birds there were Raffles' malkoha, red-bearded bee-eater, dark-throated oriole, black and red broadbill, scarlet-rumped trogon and black magpie. A crested serpent-eagle obviously had its territory there and was seen regularly. There were so many bulbuls that I'd be thinking surely there can't be any more species here, and then another one would pop out. The babblers weren't shy about foraging around the hide either. Its been five years since I birded mainland Asia and I guess I'd forgotten how difficult the Craig Robson guide makes identification of babblers! It's like they were painted by someone who'd never even seen a babbler in real life!

After the return to Kuala Tahan I had two days for the area around the HQ. I wasn't seeing much that I hadn't seen on previous trips so I wasn't too into it I have to admit, but I thought I should try the Jenut Muda trail for great argus. I hadn't gone far before I found an interesting-looking side-trail so I made a detour onto it and after only about twenty metres what must have been a Malayan peacock-pheasant scuttled off the track and walked away through the forest. I then suffered the perennial birders' problem of walking in the tropics and when you stop and try to look through the binoculars your body-heat steams up the lenses. I'm sure it was a peacock-pheasant but I couldn't see it before it disappeared! It was doubly annoying because it would have been a lifer for me (i.e. a species I hadn't seen before). That trail lead back to the Mutiara resort (the very expensive place where you stay if you can afford a lowest price of 80 Ringgits for a dorm bed), so I headed over to the Swamp Loop trail. On the boardwalk along the way I found a small group of large wood-shrikes which was a lifer. On the Swamp Loop itself the first animal I found was a white-bellied racer, which I almost stood on the tail of as it crossed the trail. The snake immediately froze and lifted the front part of its body off the ground in imitation of a cobra. I had seen this display before so was unperturbed, merely taking a lot of photos and then leaving the snake to continue with its hunting. A short while later a banded pitta bounded across the trail -- they really are shockingly colourful when they appear unexpectedly like that! -- and when I followed it into the forest I found a trio of male crested fireback pheasants foraging. Everything was going very well I have to say! On one of the muddier stretches of the Swamp Loop I found a ferrugineous babbler chasing a white-crowned forktail, and then two more lifers, a black-backed kingfisher ( alifer only because apparently all the eritheca in Sabah where I'd seen them in 2009 are actually rufidorsa -- go figure!) and a pair of large wren-babblers flicking through the leaves on the ground. I only spent the first half of the day in the forest then went back to my hostel to sleep. I was planning on returning in the evening to search for night critters but, as with the previous night, the rain began hammering down around 5pm and didn't stop through the night.

The next morning I basically repeated yesterday's walk but for longer and went further along the Jenut Muda trail before doubling back to the little track where I'd seen the maybe-peacock-pheasant (but no luck with seeing that again, so I'm still peacock-pheasantless). I thought I should really have a go at finding one of Taman Negara's more iconic birds, the Malaysian rail-babbler, and unusually for me I actually found it by call. Well, sort of. I heard a whistle that made me think "garnet pitta" (see, I do know some bird calls!) and as I was scanning the forest floor up ahead I saw a bird moving. I got my binoculars on it and it was a rail-babbler! A pair of rail-babblers to be precise, walking along bobbing their heads like chickens, just like the field-guide says. I checked the book and it said their call is a single whistle, similar to that of the garnet pitta. Nice.

I continued along the Jenut Muda trail, seeing black magpie along the way, but after a while of the track going up and up and up I thought flag this and headed back. Just as well too, because I surprised a real garnet pitta on the path which hopped away and perched on top of a log where he obviously thought he was hidden but I could still see him clearly over top of a palm frond. I'd seen garnet pitta at Taman Negara in 2006 but it wasn't good views so this made up for that.

I stopped in the resort for lunch (with my own food bought from a stall in Kuala Tahan, not at the crazily-priced Mutiara restaurant!) then went to the Swamp Loop. Before I got there though I ran into a fantastic bird-and-squirrel-wave, pretty much right where I'd seen the wood-shrikes the day before as it happens. This wasn't one of those poncy little LBJ bird-waves, this was a real man's bird-wave made up of banded and buff-rumped woodpecker, greater racquet-tailed and crow-billed drongo, Raffles' malkoha, black and red broadbill, rufous-crowned babbler, spectacled bulbul and (best of all) a pair of crested jays which caught and dismembered a giant centipede. There were lots of squirrels mixed in but, being squirrels, most were too nippy to get proper views of but I saw grey-bellied, plantain and Low's squirrels and one that might have been a red-cheeked ground squirrel. As if that wasn't enough there was also a greater tree-shrew racing along the ground catching anything the birds dropped. Whew!

The Swamp Loop itself was quiet so I continued on to the Tahan Hide which was also devoid of life, and then on halfway to the Canopy Walkway, finding another less-exciting bird-wave along the way which added only white-rumped shama and chestnut-winged babbler to the day's tally. Turning around and heading back towards the Swamp Loop I startled a coucal off the track which could only have been a short-toed coucal. A black-bellied malkoha in the trees overhead completed the day's birding.

 

I thought I'd better just post a very quick update in case anyone misses me (hint hint?). I'm in Australia where everything is expensive so will probably wait to finish the thread once back in NZ.

So basically since leaving Taman Negara I went to Melaka for a couple of days and went to the Melaka Zoo (review and photos coming in the near future). On the 1 October I flew into Perth and went to the Perth Zoo (review and photos coming etc etc) and did some birding/dolphining/squirreling around the city. Then it was off to Dryandra Woodlands to look (unsuccessfully) for numbats, and then to Cheyne Beach for more birds. I've just come back from there, and tomorrow I'm back in Perth, hopefully (if money holds out) to visit Rottnest Island for quokkas.

I'll provide a bit more detail in later posts.....