Sat, Mar 8 -Birding the BRL

We slept in until 5:15 AM and walked over to the Borneo Rainforest Lodge's breakfast buffet which isn’t officially open until seven so I was surprised at how extensive the selection was for our early group. Bob had a delicious custom-made omelet and I had pancakes with jam and a pile of sweet pineapple. At 6:30 we gathered in front of the lodge and started birding. There was quite a bit of ground fog which gradually cleared. We walked up the entry road slowly at birding speed.

The whole group in leech socks!

We’re wearing our leech socks today for the first time! These are loose socks made of tightly-woven cotton/poly that are worn over ones socks and come up over ones knees with elastic band above and below the knee. The idea is to keep leeches from climbing inside your shoes, filling up on your blood and then getting squished and creating an awful mess! Or to enable you to catch them before they climb up your leg and into & inside your clothes. The leech bites are painless and the leeches don’t spread disease, but as they inject an anticoagulant, you can bleed quite a bit after one drops off, even if it doesn’t get mashed in the process.

Bornean Horned Frog - if you can see him!

We were quite excited to be wearing them, but with the very dry weather, we didn’t see any leeches!. The high point of the morning was the sighting of a Bornean Horned Frog sitting under a leaf. Our guide knew where to find it, but even he couldn’t see it for a while and had to radio in for help. In ran another guide who located the small incredibly well-camouflaged frog…It took me quite a while to finally figure out what were leaves and what was the frog!

We walked on the hotel's canopy walkway to spot birds in the tree tops and followed a forest trail in response to a bird's loud cries and came upon a Great Argus - a 4' long pheasant with blue skin around its face and a wonderfully patterned back with a long flowing tail. Its territory lies right across the trail which made it very easy to watch this quite tame, or determined, magnificent bird.

Bob on the canopy walkway

The Great Argus

We returned for lunch and among the many offerings was a delicious ox tail stew - just great! There were some mysterious, vividly colored pieces of traditional sweets for dessert - I choose the emerald green diamond which didn’t have much flavor, sadly, but looked great.

We were time off until four and I tried to get on the internet but couldn’t manage it. We got together to do the List but there was a rumor that the rare endemic Bristlehead was around, so we all took off and walked on a trail and there was the bird with its red and yellow head, hefty hooked black bill and red and black streaked breast - a single bird family also, so quite a special bird!

Bar and dining area of the BRL

By the time we got back to the lodge it was 6:30 and we just walked right into dinner - grubby though we were. Bob and I were able to get rum and cokes at the bar before we did the List, dinner and then we went out again for a night walk. We didn’t see much, but I enjoyed the walk much more than the night drive as we could quietly walk on the boardwalk and look at the buttressed trees beautifully illuminated .