Field Guides Birding Tours: Borneo Invitational 2014
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Field Guides Tour Report BORNEO INVITATIONAL 2014 Feb 28, 2014 to Mar 17, 2014 Rose Ann Rowlett & John Rowlett For our tour description, itinerary, past triplists, dates, fees, and more, please VISIT OUR TOUR PAGE. This was an awfully exciting trip to do! Preparations themselves were invigorating, but actualizing the fantasy of encountering some of the most extraordinary birds of Asia proved absolutely thrilling, indeed--novel forms and families, like broadbills, pittas, Bornean Bristlehead, Great Argus, Asian barbets, flowerpeckers, spiderhunters, babblers, leafbirds, laughingthrushes, and a whole bunch of new genera and species among the woodpeckers, cuckoos, hornbills, trogons, kingfishers, thrushes, Muscicapids, Corvids, etc. We had good luck with all but one of "Whitehead's birds," the spiderhunter proving elusive: but the electrifying broadbill (Borneo's Cock-of-the-rock, voted top bird of the trip by most), the stubtail, the trogon, and--counting John Whitehead's father, Jeffery--the stately Fruit- hunter and the smashing green-magpie, all Kinabalu birds, were observed! An introduction to Borneo by the indefatigable Rose Ann, along with four days of pre- tour familiarization, was perfectly exhilarating. And to start things off right, Rose Ann found for the group a Green Broadbill (hearing it vocalize outside our room at Sepilok lodge during afternoon time off, where she had never detected one before) prior to the official beginning of the tour. We didn't see another. Overall we did very well with the math: more than 300 species of birds recorded; and we gobbled up 37 of the Our spectacular Great Argus, by Peggy Keller 41 Bornean endemics feasible on the tour route (52 occur in all of Borneo). The weather for most of the trip was atypically dry (producing a mere handful of leeches throughout the entire group), although the last couple of days at Kinabalu were very wet, essentially knocking us out of much birding and no doubt contributing to a few misses (but finally revealing the rationale for leech socks). Among our favorites were the broadbills that occur in Borneo (both green broadbills--we got both; and the Asian broadbills--we got all five, the Long-tailed being unbeatable), the pittas (we got all four endemics, plus Hooded; we missed Giant), the Bristlehead (of course), the Great Argus, the Bornean Green-Magpie, all four wren-babblers, the Fruit-hunter (a distinguished, if washed out, Fruiteater), the Whiskered Treeswift, the striking Red-bearded Bee-eater, and the Eye-browed Jungle-Flycatcher (a much better bird in the field than on paper). Of the four endemics missed by the group, Bornean Ground-Cuckoo (heard, but conditions were too dry to permit a visible response to playback) and Whitehead's Spiderhunter were the two urging us to return to Sabah, "the land below the wind." Also walloping were the non-feathered things--both flying and non-flying! We saw all three, big flying squirrels, flying lizards, Harlequin Flying Frog and Wallace's Flying Frog (one of Joe's most wanted), and Flying Lemur, or Colugo. Did I mention the several species of Birdwing butterflies, or countless thousands of Wrinkle-lipped Free-tail Bats? Then there were the next-to-invisible Bornean Horned Frog (Joe's other favorite), numerous monkeys, including Proboscis and of course Orangutans, Pygmy Elephant, four species of civets and Greater Mouse Deer on our night drives, along with two of the most extraordinary primates anywhere: Horsefield's Tarsier and Slow Loris--what a name! Then there was Rafflesia keithii, an entirely endoparasitic flowering plant (lacking leaves, stems, and roots!) endemic to Sabah whose flowers are up to a meter in diameter and that blooms for but a precious few days (we saw a first-dayer and a second-dayer and dead ones), and a blooming Podochilus tenius, the smallest orchid in southeast Asia and one of the smallest in the world. Joe and Bill introduced us all to Iridium Flares (a rather complex phenomenon that occurs after dark when the hidden sun flashes off one of the mirrors on a satellite passing overhead, reflecting various magnitudes of light back to the viewer), and we managed to see several, one at BRL with a magnitude of negative 7.2! Now THAT is a first for the tour. We started out flying to Kota Kinabalu, then connecting to Sandakan, and from there by vehicle to Sepilok Rainforest Discovery Center, where we spent four days of pre-tour time with those participants who chose to arrive early (all, as it turned out). We then drove to the very nice Sukau Rainforest Lodge and Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary where we had three full days of great birding and considerable boating along the brackish Kinabatangan River and its tributaries. Nearby the entrance road to the Gomantong Caves provided some great rainforest birding, some of my favorite. The black-nest cave itself is famous for four species of swiftlets that nest there, including edible-nest, but most had vamoosed the cave the morning we visited, no doubt a little camera-shy of Sir David Attenborough and his plentiful film crew determined to scale every wall. From there we drove to Borneo Rainforest Lodge, situated right on the banks of the River Danum. This was the crown jewel of lodges, and the birding there was spectacular as well. After four nights Field Guides Birding Tours • www.fieldguides.com • 800-728-4953 1 (packed with night drives, the supreme rewards coming in a Colugo and a roosting Black-headed Pitta all rolled up in a black-and-crimson sleep-ball!) we drove to Lahad Datu on the coast where we took an afternoon flight back to Kota Kinabalu. From here we birded a lovely area in the Crocker Range National Park en route to our last stop in the montane forests of Kinabalu Park, where we spent our final four mornings in the field, our splendid lodge perched on the slopes of Mt. Kinabalu, at 4100m the highest peak between the Himalayas and New Guinea. We had great visibility of this peak for much of our stay, though rain clouds interfered the last couple of days. This itinerary--from the lowlands into the highlands--seemed the ideal progression for the tour, although Rose Ann has done it successfully in the reverse. Throughout this triplist, I've used the following abbreviations: RDC = Rainforest Discovery Center (at Sepilok) BRL = Borneo Rainforest Lodge (in Danum Valley) "Sundaland specialty" refers to a species whose range is generally limited to (and sometimes restricted within) the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and surrounding islands, all of which were connected during the last ice age. The eastern boundary of Sundaland is Wallace's Line, a deepwater trench between Borneo and Sulawesi and between Bali and Lombok, east of which is Wallacea/Australasia. Many of the birds of Borneo, marked with an S on the checklist, are Sundaland specialties. Many of these Sundaland birds have taxa which are endemic to Borneo, as noted in Myers's field guide. I have indicated these taxa on the triplist with their trinomial, in part to demonstrate how many special forms are present, many within an already restricted range of Sundaland; but also to call attention to the possibility that some/many of these insular taxa may be elevated to species status, since that is the trend of scientific thinking today as witnessed by Frank Gill's paper, "Species taxonomy of birds: Which null hypothesis?" that appears in the current AUK (Vol. 131, no. 2, April 2014). I quote the abstract below because it summarizes the thinking behind this trend and is especially pertinent to Borneo. "The polytypic species concept unites populations that theoretically could and would interbreed were the opportunity to arise. This concept places the burden of proof of reproductive incapability and species status on those claiming species or higher rank. Advances in our understanding of the nature of reproductive isolation, the genetics of speciation, the limited role of gene flow, the power of directional selection, and the dynamics of hybridization support a different null hypothesis for taxonomic decisions, one that places the burden of proof on lumping' rather than on 'splitting' taxa at the species level. Switching the burden of proof provides an improved conceptual basis for the recognition of many allopatric island taxa and subspecies groups that merit species status. Taxonomic revisions based on these advances predictably confirm that distinct sister populations once lumped as polytypic species are independent evolutionary lineages that exhibit essential reproductive isolation. Release from the concerns about hybridization also positions proposed species for timely taxonomic decisions. The stage is set to proactively redefine polytypic species to separate component species for the 21st century. The improved species classification will better reflect phylogeny and evolutionary status, characterize biodiversity more accurately, guide improved sampling patterns of bird populations for systematic studies, and enable informed conservation decisions." Taxonomy follows the Clements checklist with online updates, including the most recent (version 6.8: August 2013); so it contains the most current treatment at the species level, thus elevating a couple of Borneo taxa to species status since the checklist we were using was printed. That means a few more Bornean endemics! I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the trinomials on this triplist become binomials over the next few years. To access or download the updated Clements checklist online, simply google "Clements checklist." The next revision is scheduled to be online in August of this year. We thank Hamit Suban (for joining us pre-tour), our keen local guides (Hazwan, Paul, and Adrian), our captains, boatmen, and the staffs of our wonderful lodgings throughout the tour. And thanks, too, to Karen at Field Guides who handled the details in advance of our tour.