AL Blog: Morning down Kinabatangan River

MORNING down the Kinbatangan - and I MEAN morning - 5.30am!

Hornbill - our first sighting.

Obviously the best time to see wildlife is at dawn or dusk because the animals wouldn’t silly enough to be out there in the middle of the day - like Mum & me!! [Mum told me about the song making fun of Colonial Brits - “Mad dogs and Englishman out in the midday sun...”].

Anyway, we went out on the river for three hours at 5.30am. I forgot to tell you, the boats are locally crafted and powered by electric motors to reduce noise, air and water pollution.

We really need a stronger telephoto lens because the birds perched high up in the trees, often dead ones for some reason (I mean the trees, not the birds) so we could mostly only catch their silhouettes on camera although in real life we could see them quite well.

Highlights of this boat trip were: hornbill, toucan, black storks, white storks, kingfishers, long tailed and short tailed macaques, and a snake that looked like a turd. There were other birds but I don’t remember their names. We went into the ox-bow lake which was almost covered with water hyacinths, like the Saigon River sometimes. I read that because they are free-floating and breed very fast, they are clogging up tropical rivers and are a threat to the ecosystem. Two “parents” of water hyacinths can produce 1200 individuals in 4 months.

black storks

White stork

KINGFISHERS - I got this photo off google but I wanted to put it in because I saw one in flight and got a good view. Kingfishers can see in the air and underwater by evolving egg shaped lens that can focus in both. They eat fish and insects, frogs & lizards but whatever Kingfishers eat is beaten to death by being whipped against a tree or dropped on a rock. Kingfishers are solitary birds.

We got back at 8.30am and the breakfast gong went at 9am.