Sunday, Mar 9 - We went back to our old schedule
of 5:30 for breakfast - even so, the kitchen managed to have a wide variety of
food -I had dragon fruit and scrambled eggs with chilies and
onion.
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| canopy walkway in the early morning
mist |
Rose
Ann and John decided to split us up with John taking half the participants on a
walk by the river for pittas (small, colorful, skulking birds) and Rose Ann
taking the rest of us back up in the canopy walkway. We got a ride in the truck
to the canopy trail and climbed up the tower and along the swinging walkways to
other towers. It was relatively quiet but we saw several species and ran into
the Argus on its trail once again. Finally at noon we drove back to the lodge
where I decided that I needed sleep more than food and showered and napped until
Bob came back from lunch. We tried connecting to the internet in the lobby, and
failed, but I found that the lodge shop had Magnum ice cream bars (!) and had
one for lunch.
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| The party at Randy & Sid's |
At
3:00 Randy and Sid threw a birding party in Standard 9, their room, as they have
a view of blooming heliconias and wanted the others to see the Bornean
Spiderhunter, a hummingbird-like, strikingly yellow bird with a long curved bill
for sipping nectar. We gathered our various snacks (salmon jerky from Seattle,
pistachios, chocolate cookies and soda) and had a jolly time until shortly after
four when we were due back in the truck to look for more sunbirds and barbets
further back on the entry road.
We
got some good views of several birds and returned at 6:15. The plan was to get
back on the truck at 6:45 and go for another night drive, but Bob and I opted
out for showers and a couple hours relaxation and a visit to the bar. Everyone
else returned at eight and joined us for dinner, having seen a Wallace‘s Flying
Frog and a Slow Loris, another primitive primate!! I went to the stir fry bar
and had a wonderful mixture of four different greens, blanched briefly in
boiling water, and then added to a hot wok in which the chef had put oil, garlic
and some spices. To bed.
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| The stir-fry
bar |
Mon, Mar 10 - After
breakfast our group, which had spent the previous morning on the canopy walkway,
today took the Jacuzzi Trail. We
walked across a swinging bridge and then climbed up a dirt path with some steps
carved into the dirt, with occasionally with a rope to pull yourself up, and quite steep nevertheless! We then scrambled
past the trail down to a lovely pool in the river, the Jacuzzi swimming pool, and onto rougher trails to a stream where we listened with our very good hotel bird
guide, Paul, for pittas.
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| Scarlet-rumped
Trogan |
We unexpectedly saw the
beautiful Bornean Banded Pitted moving on the opposite bank and Paul then tried
taping in the rare Blue-banded Pitta. He managed to call one in, but had a lot of
difficulty getting us on to it. The
bird has a bright red breast crossed by a zig-zag turquoise band, but it scurried around in the underbrush which
making it very hard to see! Finally
Paul crossed the stream and climbed up the steep dirt bank and found a good
view. One by one we crossed and
climbed up. I finally got a glimpse of
the red bird and then had to slide down the slope to get back to the
others. Quite an ordeal with my
disintegrating knees!!
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| Danum River |
We got back to our room at
11:30, showered, and joined the others for lunch. We had until 3:30 off and I got some ice for
my knees and took a nap. We all
climbed on the truck and bounced out the entrance road to the property border
and then walked and birded our way back. We saw a young, very dark
brown male orangutan who climbed up a tall tree next to us in order to cross the
road. We
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| ...with a 6' Water Monitor |
were very
worried as the branches were quite thin at the top and a good distance from
those on the other side. Many orangutans get injured misjudging jumps, but
fortunately ours finally thought the better of it and
retreated.
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| The beautiful Bornean rainforest |
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