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Birds of the Sepilok Forest – a Photographic Guide

BBooks — Tue, 25 May 2010 09:10:07 +0000

This is a neat little book of 110 pages has 200 colour photographs of birds seen at the Rainforest Discovery Centre and surroundings at Sepilok, near Sandakan on the E. Coast of Sabah, East Malaysia on the island of Borneo. 300 bird species have now been recorded, with 15 endemics, including the icon of¬† Borneo birds, the Borneo Bristlehead (see pic), which is easier to see here than elsewhere. Sepilok is only 20 minutes from Sandakan airport. It has a third generation canopy walkway, a heroic structure in steel, as steady as a rock, surrounded by scattered tall forest trees and a regenerating lower storey. Hornbills are common and easily seen.

The Rainforest Discovery Centre is proving to be one of the best birding sites in Borneo, due to its accessibility and its nearness to the¬† primary forest of¬† the 6,100 ha Sepilok Forest Reserve. The Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre is just down the road.

The¬† photos in this book are of a high quality and the text informative, although some further work is needed on it. The Forestry Department in general and Dr Robert Ong (text) and Ced Prudente (photos) can be congratulated on a really handy pocket guide that does the business. BBooks looks forward to selling updated versions of this book for many years to come.

Tales from the Bird Festival – Day 5

BBooks — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:36:21 +0000

Snake's eye view of the canopy walkway

The Festival was very quiet today. So the birdlife is sulking because there was nothing much to disrupt. However out in the forest things were stirring….snakes. A Japanese birder rushed to our bookstall early on to say he had met a very large snake on the canopy walkway. It was, he said, as thick as a man’s arm and bright green.

BBooks thinks that in his excitement he exaggerated a tiny bit about its girth and that what he saw was a Wagler’s Pit Viper, which is short but quite chunky – and often bright green. Not really quite what you want blocking your path on the walkway. BBooks was frightened by a snake in a big field of long grass in Connecticut when he was 5, and has never been quite the same since. One of his nightmares is to be on a canopy walkway (30m up) at night and discovering that a pit viper is blocking his path in front and then he turns round and another one is behind. Luckily our Japanese friend had only one to deal with and it was daytime. Pit Vipers barely move during the day and even at night they don’t rush about. However when night falls they will strike like lightning at anything challenging or edible within range.

The latest canopy technology.

The Rainforest Discovery Centre’s walkway is third generation and takes this kind of superstructure to a new level of sophistication. Earlier ones were suspended between trees 50m or so apart and not good to be on if an anchor tree collapsed or a branch fell down This one runs between towers and is supported by massive steelwork.

It’s a strange feeling being on a wide footpath 30m up, at the same level as the crowns of the smaller trees (the bigger ones still tower miles above you). You feel anything could happen up there, in an alien world. But not pit vipers, please.

Tales from the Bird Festival – Day 4

BBooks — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:59:59 +0000

We seem to have been here half a century. Today yet more stock arrived from KK on the Tung Mah Express to satisfy the insatiable demand for the two field guides. It’s gradually emerging that one (Myers) is the choice of the dedicated birder, while the other (Phillipps) is scoring with the less committed. It has lots of little yellow boxes filled with fascinating titbits of info.

Festivalites tracking the Bristleheads

The birdlife continues to sabotage the programme. Two days ago it was Black Hornbills, today the Borneo Bristlehead. Halfway through one of the talks on the verandah overlooking the forest the audience (and the speaker!) simply got up and walked out, the better to see a couple of BB’s hopping about overhead.

BBooks thought it had better follow, or appear conspicuous. Bristleheads look as though they were put together by a sketching party of schoolkids. The head is bright red and yellow (see the poster below – Oct 6th) with a big shiny black wart. The feathers on the crown often stick up like a punk hair do. With bristles. The feet look large and clumsy, and what happened to the tail? It whistles, burps and burbles. Everything is out of proportion, the colours are positively painful and it just seems to potter about, not chasing things and being ecological.
Never mind, this has become the icon of Bornean birdwatchers. People travel from all over the world to see it. It occurs nowhere else and until recently was very seldom seen. But at the Rainforest Discovery Centre it has been appearing every day. Just shows what can happen when birders get together. What will be the disruptive force tomorrow? A Storm’s Stork hitching a ride on one of the pedalos on the lake no doubt. Yr. correspondent received a near terminal crick in the neck watching the Bristleheads today, but hopes to be sufficiently recovered on the morrow to report on….further Tall Tales from the Rainforest

Tales from the Bird Festival – Day 2

BBooks — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:38:37 +0000

The second day of the Festival opened hot and muggy. An overnight storm failed utterly to clear the air. It’s been like something out of Conrad all day. Lots of local families, being Sunday and free entry to the Rainforest Discovery Centre. This is half an hour outside Sandakan on the E. Coast of Sabah, with the buildings right up close to the forest. In fact so close that this evening we were able to watch a flying squirrel poke its head out of its sleeping hole in a dead tree, about 20m up, have a good look round and then glide slowly and silently to a nearby tree. This was very tall and we watched it hunch its way all the way to the top looking like Dracula in a mackintosh, but a beautiful russet brown rather than black (we’re sure Dracula wore black). With the poise of a seasoned star it then paused and looked down at us mere mortals, before launching itself off on a celestial descent into the deep forest.
At 5pm came the results of the Bird Race (a competition to see which team of birders can tot up the most species in 24h)(and to answer the obvious question there is an umpire with each team to confirm accuracy). The Chairman of the Festival was announcing the winners when he realized he had lost the audience completely, as a trio of Black Hormbills did a flypast. Twice he started again, only to be totally upstaged each time by more Hornbills. After some deliberation they agreed to settle in a nearby tall tree and let the proceedings continue, watching with interest

Tales from the Bird Festival – Day 1

BBooks — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:43:07 +0000

Borneo Books set up shop on the edge of the rainforest for the Borneo Bird Festival today. Our stall looks out on forest with some tall trees, one 50m tall. Flying squirrels are frequent in the evenings – the look like flying tea trays as they glide from way, way up. They can do about 300m. The festival opened with speeches from VIP’s followed by the launching of the two new field guides to the birds of Borneo. The authors, Quentin Phillipps and Susan Myers, both flew in from overseas for the occasion. It was so hot, humid and still that yr correspondent nearly expired.

The photo on the right shows Susan Myers being congratulated by Datuk Masidi Manjun, Minister of Tourism on the publication and launch of her book

We are at the Borneo Bird Festival 2009

BBooks — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:50:16 +0000

Borneo Books will be represented at the Borneo Bird Festival, and will have for sale amongst others two brand new books on the Birds of Borneo.

Birds of Borneo ‚Äì Phillipps Field Guide

Birds of Borneo ‚Äì Myers Field Guide

So if you are visiting the Rainforest Discovery Centre (RDC), Seplilok, please drop by our Stand No. 18, have a chat and browse through the books we have available, including these two magnificent volumes.

Wanna new bird book?

BBooks — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:06:04 +0000

Shortly you will have a choice, as two field guides to the Birds of Borneo are being launched. We should have stock of both at our stall at the Borneo Bird Festival at the Rainforest Discovery Centre at Sepilok (Sandakan – Sabah) Oct10 – 15th. Both the latest thing in bird identification. www.borneobirdfestival.com/
BBooks

Birds of Burma; The ( Fourth Edition )

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Mystical Burma is hidden inside the pages of this classic book, now re-issued and updated by the late author, B.E. Smythies. From the time he began his forestry career there in 1934 until his last revision of these pages in 1999, his was one of the key influences in Burmese ornithology. Fewer than a score of important papers has appeared on Burmese birds since 1945, but birdwatchers have continued to add a trickle of new species to the list. These findings have been fully incorporated into the new edition. New taxonomic work on groups such as bushlarks and warblers has helped to push the total of birds recorded in Burma to virtually one thousand – amongst the richest in the world for a country of this size. The plates for this edition have been re-photographed from the original paintings, which survive after one of the most dramatic escape stories in ornithological history. These paintings help to document the changing birdlife described in the text, from the decline of the great waterbird colonies, of pelicans and cormorants, to the new wave of records produced by tourism and birdwatching, today.

Birds of Java,Sumatra & Bali; A Photographic Guide to

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Birds of Mount Kinabalu, Borneo

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000