Head in the Clouds (Lahad Datu to KK)

14 May 2019, Lahad Datu, Sabah, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

These are images from two flights, from Ladah Datu to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah and from Kota Kinabalu to Kuala Lumpur. They are all monochrome conversions of infrared images.

When leaving on the plane from Lahad Datu I was instructed by a stewardess that I was not allowed to take photographs out the window during takeoff because the camera is an electronic device. That has never happened to me previously and astonished me as the camera is hardly going to be sending out wifi signals. Consequently, most of these images are of clouds.

Not long before, we took off from Lahad Datu in Eastern Sabah.

We are flying over Sabah.

Rivers and mainly cleared land below here.

The clouds could be quite majestic though.

This is near Kota Kinabalu. We have landed and taken off again.

I was able to photograph clouds over the South China Sea for a while until the visibility closed right in.

Now we are over mainland Malaysia.

A small sea-front village.

Workers’ cottages, probably, beside the ubiquitous palm oil plantations.

Palm Oil plantations.

This was the last post of our trip to Sabah. You can see links to all the other posts in the Sabah Itinerary post.

Next, a return to the last few days in Havana in the Caribbean trip.

Sabah Monochromes

Aug11

3-14 May 2019, Sabah, Malaysia

Links go to posts with the colour versions of the images (where there may also be more information and context). If an image does not have a link, the preceding one applies.

Street markets, Kota Kinabalu.

from KK Markets (Kota Kinabalu).

Fish markets, Kota Kinabalu.

Fishing boat, Kota Kinabalu.

from KK Fishing Boats (Kota Kinabalu).

Egret, Kota Kinabalu Wetland Ramsar Site.

from Egrets – I’ve had a few….

Orchid, Mt Kinabalu Botanical Garden.

from Mount Kinabalu.

Common Tree Nymphs, Butterf;y Farm, Poring Hot Springs.

from Poring Hot Springs and Sabah Tea Plantation.

Sunset, Sabah Tea Plantation.

Scarlet-backed flowerpecker.

from Sepilok Day 1 – Giant Flying Squirrels.

Unidentified Butterfly.

from Sepilok Day 2 – Sun Bears and Orang Utans.

Sun Bear, Borneo Sun Bear Conservation Centre.

Native bees and hive, on the trunk of a tree.

Orangutan, Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, Sepilok.

Wild orangutan, Sepilok.

Orangutans in nest high in trees, Sepilok.

Plantain squirrel, Sepilok.

Western Tarsier, Sepilok.

Pig-tailed macaques, Kinabatangan River.

from Kinabatangan River Day 1 – Pig Tailed Macaques.

Egret, Kinabatangan River

from Kinabatangan River Day 2 – Proboscis Monkeys.

Male Proboscis Monkey.

Wild orangutan and baby, Caves of Goomontong.

from Tabin Day 1.

Pig-tailed macaques, Tabin Wildlife Reserve.

from Tabin Day 1.

Monitor lizard.

Agamid lizard (draco genus).

from Tabin Day 2 – Clouded Leopard.

Crested serpent eagle.

White-crowned hornbill.

from Tabin Day 3 – Last day in Sabah.

Honey comb of the Giant Honey Bee (apis dosata).

Walking towards the mud volcano.

Buffy fish owl.

Sunset.

Tabin Day 3 – Last day in Sabah

Aug8

Tabin Wildlife Reserve, Sabah, 13 May 2019.

Gibbon.

I got up early this morning and the gibbons went across overhead again but the light wasn’t nearly as good as the previous day.

Gibbon.

White-crowned hornbill.

After breakfast we went for a drive and then for a walk to the mud volcano. This and the next few images were on the way there.

Honey comb of the Giant Honey Bee (apis dosata).

These bees make their honey combs on places like the underneath of branches to make it hard for the sun bears to access them. That texture you see is the comb covered in bees.

Female long-tailed parakeet.

As we passed another tree there was the head of a parrot appearing from a nesting hole on the trunk.

Some of our party walking along towards the mud volcano.

Mud volcano.

Bornean Rhino and Teetash.

This is the third-last Bornean Rhino in Sabah, which had died a couple of years before and was stuffed. This is an adult rhino and Teetash kindly volunteered to stand beside it so you can see how small it is. The Bornean Rhino is a subspecies of the Sumatran Rhino. There are less than 100 Sumatran Rhinos and likely no more than 15 Bornean Rhinos. The numbers are so small due to habitat loss. We were due to see the last male Bornean rhino in Sabah but he took ill a few days before we arrived and died shortly after we left. There is one female left in Sabah but she is not in good health.

There are three species of rhinoceros, the African, the Asian and the Sumatran. The Sumatran is more closely related to the extinct Woolly Rhinoceros of Europe (as shown in cave paintings) than the African or Asian rhinos. A distant and extinct rhino, Elasmotherium sibiricum, with a two-metre horn, is the likely source of the unicorn legend.

Elephant by elephant.

This is a painting by an Asian elephant. Borneo pygmy elephants are a subspecies that has been separated for 3,000 years. They may have been in Borneo for that long but it is likely they are actually surviving Javan elephants (otherwise extinct), given to the Sultan of Sulu (NE Sabah/ SE Philippines) around 1395. Compared to Asian elephants, they are smaller with relatively larger ears, longer tails and straighter tusks. They are threatened by habitat loss. There are 1,000 to 4,000 in Borneo, including some in Tabin but we did not see any. However, we did hear them in Sepilok. They have a group there but do not want human interaction as they are intending to return them to the wild.

Rhinoceros hornbill.

Not to be confused with Bornean rhinoceros which does not have a bill and are not known for their flying.

We are now in the late afternoon to evening, taking photographs again from the back of a truck.

A piece of grass in focus and the disappearing tip of the tail of a leopard cat, somewhat out of focus.

The previous night, I had a leopard cat in focus and lined up. Unfortunately I hesitated to adjust exposure and it was gone. Gaaah! So I was determined to find another one if I could. There it was this night, on the other side of the truck, but by the time I found it through my long telephoto lens, it was on its way and this was all I got.

Leopard cats are similar in size to domestic cats but more slender with longer legs. They are widespread in India, China, Japan and South East Asia and not under threat. The ones in Sabah are of the Sunda subspecies. The ones we saw were leaving the forest at night for the palm oil plantations, probably to hunt for rats.

Leopard cat.

However, Clive Moon, who was sitting beside me, did get a photograph of the leopard cat and he has very kindly allowed me to show it on this blog.

Buffy fish owl.

A disappearing sunset.

Water lilies.

On the last morning, I also went looking for gibbons but they were later than the previous two days and I did not wait around long enough so I missed them and took these photographs of lilies instead.

All of these photographs are completely normal images with normal colour, as certified by the Andaman Islander Institute of Normalcy (AIIN). Well, OK, maybe not all. That’s except for the four infrared images. You may be able to work out which they are.

25,000 Images

Just a note of trivia. There are now 25,000 images that you can access through this Blog. There are 14,555 in the blog itself and another 10,458 live music images from 1,001 performances that you can access through links on the All Performances page. The Honey comb of the Giant Honey Bee was image number 25,000. If I printed each of these images at A4 and laid them end to end, they would stretch nearly 7.5 kilometres.

This is also the last post from Sabah, except for some images from the plane and some monochromes.

Tabin Day 2 – Clouded Leopard

Jul28

Tabin Wildlife Reserve, Sabah, 12 May 2019.

Gibbon.

We were up very early in the morning and were able to observe a troupe of gibbons making their way past us, high in the trees, from tree to tree. These are Müeller’s gibbons, or North Borneo gibbons. Gibbons diverged from great apes around 17 million years ago and they live exclusively on fruit so do not need to descend from trees. They move by brachiation, swinging from branch to branch, for distances of up to 15 meters per swing, and can move at remarkable speeds, up to 55 km/hr.

Pygmy squirrel.

Crested serpent eagle.

After breakfast we went for a ride in a truck and then a walk in the rainforest.

Agamid lizard (draco genus).

Draco Cornutis (green flying lizard).

It is not apparent here, but this fellow has flaps under its body that allows it to glide from tree to tree.

Monitor lizard.

In the late afternoon we went for another ride in the truck, photographing with a long lens from the open tray.

Drongo.

Crested serpent eagle.

Rhinoceros hornbills.

Crested serpent eagle.

It was after dark when we came upon another group who had seen a clouded leopard. It had caught a civet and had settled down up a tree, behind the foliage. It wasn’t visible but we knew it was there so we waited. After about half an hour we caught a glimpse of a tail, which you may be able to see in the image above.

After nearly an hour, the clouded leopard moved and we were able to see it through the foliage.

This is the Borneo subspecies of the Sunda clouded leopard. The Sunda clouded leopard is endemic to Sumatra and Borneo, and separated from the mainland clouded leopard about three million years ago. Note also that the clouded leopard is not a subspecies of leopard. They are the sole members of the subfamily neofelis, whereas the subfamily panthera includes leopard, tiger, snow leopard, lion and jaguar. The Sunda clouded leopard is medium-sized, weighing 12 to 26kg. Its flexible ankle joints allow it to climb down trees head first and it has the longest tooth size to head size of any cat, perhaps to help it hold on to prey in trees. It is classified as vulnerable due to habitat loss as it is dependent on living in rainforest.

I didn’t see the clouded leopard’s head but Damien Esquerré did and has kindly allowed me to show you this photograph.

Our guides said it was the first one they had seen for five years.

Tabin Day 1

Jul21

Tabin Wildlife Reserve, Sabah, 11 May 2019.

Orangutan mother and baby.

On this day we travelled to Tabin Wildlife Reserve. On the way we stopped at the Caves of Goomontong, at a huge cave populated with bats and swiftlets. Lighting was fiendishly difficult there and I have no images to show you but on the walk back from the cave we encountered a wild orangutan mother and baby. It looks as though they might be in a zoo but they’re just sitting on the steps of an abandoned building.

Millipede.

Now we are in Tabin in the later morning and I think this millipede was on a rail outside our room. The difference between centipedes and millipedes is not the number of legs, it’s that centipedes have one pair of legs per segment whereas millipedes have two.

Pig-tailed macaques.

It is now the late afternoon. We might have been sitting around to escape the midday heat or it might have been raining. I can’t remember which. You expect to encounter rain each afternoon and perhaps in the evening in Sabah but we were lucky in this trip and that only happened in Tabin.

Pig-tailed Macaque.

We were photographing these images from the back of a small open truck.

Monitor lizard and with something, maybe an insect, in his mouth.

Tabin Wildlife Reserve is a large island in a sea of palm oil plantations. There is a lot of wildlife though most is secondary forest and it shows how much though not all of the wildlife will survive the largest trees being taken out, though the replacement of the forest for uses such as palm oil plantations is another matter. There is also a much smaller island of primary forest, but that is not open to humans.

Crested serpent eagle.

White-crowned hornbill.

Buffy fish owl.

We are now on a nighttime walk.

Stick insect (probably Haaniella echinate), endemic to Borneo.

Unidentified moth.

Kinabatangan River Day 2 – Proboscis Monkeys

Jul14

Kinabatangan River, Sabah, 10 May 2019.

These images are from two trips along the river in a boat, one in the early morning and one in the late afternoon. All the wildlife shots are from a considerable distance with a very long lens (420mm, full frame camera).

Oriental Pied Hornbill.

This is the most common Asian hornbill and the most adaptable to habitat loss, so is not considered threatened. Its distribution spreads over India and South-East Asia.

Blue-throated Bee Eater.

Egret.

Male Proboscis Monkey.

The male proboscis monkey is recognisable by his large nose, thought to aid in making calls.

Female Proboscis Monkey.

Proboscis monkeys are endemic to Borneo, and live in coastal areas close to water. They are quite large monkeys and are good swimmers, having partially webbed feet. They are classified as endangered due to habitat loss.

Female Proboscis Monkey.

Rhinocerous Hornbill.

Saltwater Crocodile.

Rhinocerous Hornbill.

The rhinocerous hornbill is a large hornbill with a wingspan of around a metre. It is endemic to Borneo, Sumatra, Java, the Malay Peninsula and Southern Thailand. It requires large tree hollows for nesting and is classified as vulnerable due to habitat loss. The females seals herself for nesting in a tree cavity sealed with mud and the male feeds her through a hole in the mud.

Some views of the river from the boat. Her as Usual it is quite hot and humid

… though sometimes it cools a little off due to rain.

Usually it rains often but we were pretty lucky.

Proboscis Monkeys.

Collared kingfisher.

Blue-eared kingfisher.

A boat on the river, showing something of the scale of the rainforest.

Proboscis Monkey.

Proboscis Monkeys.

Male Proboscis Monkey.

Lines over the river. Not zip lines or for flying foxes, they are for monkeys to cross without having to tangle with the crocodiles.

(And yes, those three images in the middle were infrared).

Kinabatangan River Day 1 – Pig Tailed Macaques

Jul6

Kinabatangan River, Sabah, 9 May 2019.

Collared kingfisher.

These daylight images – this one and the next nine, were all taken from a boat on the Kinabatangan River, all with a very long telephoto lens (420mm).

Long tailed Macaque.

Macaques are amongst the most widespread of monkeys and are endemic to Asia. North Africa and Gibraltar. Long tailed Macaques are endemic to South East Asia. They live in a variety of environments and can be closely associated with human settlements. They can be an invasive species in some places, including Hong Kong and West Papua. They are onmivores and considered of least concern for their conservation status.

Long tailed Macaque.

Southern Pig-tailed Macaques.

Southern Pig-tailed Macaques are endemic to Borneo, Sumatra and mainland Malaysia. They live in rainforest and are also omniverous. They are classified as vulnerable.

Pig-tailed Macaques.

Male Proboscis Monkey.

Proboscis monkeys are large monkeys endemic to Borneo. The large nose of the males may assist in giving them a more resonant call. They are aboreal (tree-dwelling), live close to water and are good swimmers. They mostly eat fruit and leaves and will jump from tree to tree. They are classified as endangered, due to habitat loss.

Macaque.

A Proboscis Monkey family tree.

Female Proboscis monkey.

Monitor lizard sleeping on the branch of a tree.

After dinner we went for a walk and I took some more images by torchlight.

Slow Loris.

This is one was actually moving around quite quickly, despite the name. It was a challenging photographic situation, dimly lit by torchlight. requiring an exposure of 25,600 ISO and still three stops under.

This is a Phillipine Slow Loris, one of four species of what was previously the Borneo Slow Loris. Ironically. it is endemic to Northern Borneo and not the Phillipines. It is nocturnal and sparsely populated. It is thought to be more nocturnal than other slow loris sub-species but little is known about it. Not something you are guaranteed to see in a Borneo rainforest at all.

Unique for primates, slow lorises have a poisonous bite. They have a poisonous gland near their armpits which they lick and the secretion becomes mixed with saliva. They are more closely related to lemurs than monkeys. They are classified as vulnerable or endangered and some subspecies have yet to be classified. As well as habitat loss, they are threatened by a pet trade. They look very cute with their large nocturnal eyes but the trade is very cruel. They usually have their teeth cut or pulled due to the poisonous bit and often die from that. Then they are nocturnal and have a specialised diet so do not do well in captivity.

Stick insect.

Asian Palm Civet.

Civets are part of the feliformia suborder of carnivora that includes cats, hyenas, mongooses and civets. Civets are found in South East Asia, India and China. Asian Palm Civets are nocturnal omnivores, mainly eating berries and fruit and leading solitary lifestyles. There is a strange demand for coffee made from beans that have been eaten and digested by civets. Traditionally, this was from harvesting the faeces of wild civets but it has led to captive civets in battery cages being fed coffee beans to produce the coffee. There is also an unfortunately large (and illegal) usage of civets in Indonesia as pets.

Katydid.

Unidentified butterfly.

Lantern bug (Pyrops whiteheadi).

They are called lantern bugs because it was believed erroneously in the eighteenth century that their extended hollow “snout” glowed in the dark.

Sepilok Day 2 – Sun Bears and Orang Utans

Jun29

Sepilok, Sabah, 9 May 2019.

Unidentified butterfly.

In the morning we visited the Borneo Sun Bear Conservation Centre. Each one has a unique chest patch.

The sun bear is the world’s smallest bear, averaging one metre in length and is endemic to Borneo.

They are primarily nocturnal, feeding on insects, though they also have a taste for honey.

Obviously here, they are not in the wild and are feeding on carrots.

They are listed as vulnerable and their population is declining due to habitat loss.

Note the formidable claws, presumably for climbing trees.

Unidentified bees and hive, on the trunk of a tree.

Unidentified caterpillar.

In the afternoon we visited the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre.

Feet and hands are relatively interchangeable.

There are rescued orangutans here, including infants without parents. Food and care is provided and the centre is open to adjacent rainforest including wild orangutans.

Orangutans, including the Borneo species, are critically endangered due to habitat loss. Population in Borneo has declined by about 15% since the middle 20th century and they may become extinct in the wild within ten to twenty years without effective conservation measures.

This and the preceding three images were taken through glass in an observation building.

We are now out of the building and in the rainforest.

There are also some feeding sites out in the open.

You have to stay back from the orangutans though. While they are not usually aggressive, they are eight times stronger than a human.

Orangutans make a nest in a tree each night. Here some were doing just that.

You can only take one camera and lens in the see the orangutans and no bags of any kind. Otherwise, an orangutan might take a fancy to your camera bag (and you’d be well advised not to argue). I had a 300mm lens (for a full frame body) and a 1.4x teleconverter. This was too long to be convenient inside the building but came in handy for these last images.

There was also a plantain squirrel checking out the culinary options on display.

Black fur but pinkish underneath.

Much later we went for a night walk. This is an Island Palm Civet by torchlight.

Rufous-backed kingfisher.

Strange unidentified insect.

Slow Loris (such as you can see – pushing the boundaries to get that much).

Black and Crimson Pitta, sleeping in a tree.

A Western Tarsier.

We were very fortunate to encounter a Tarsier, which are rare, nocturnal and hard to find. It is an ancient primate, little changed for 45 million years. (Primates include monkeys, lemurs and apes, which in turn include us). There are several species and all are classified as vulnerable to extinction. It is tiny, 70-150cm in length and 1 kilogram in weight and each of its giant eyes are as large as its brain. It is the only carnivorous primate, eating mainly insects but also birds, lizards and bats. It can take great leaps from one tree to the next, to a distance of around thirty times its body length. It can also rotate its head 180 degrees.

Sepilok Day 1 – Giant Flying Squirrels

Jun22

Sepilok, Sabah, 8 May 2019.

Palm oil plantations surrounding Sepilok.

Most people probably think of Borneo as a wild land covered in rainforest and populated with exotic tribes and remarkable wildlife. And so it was as recently as fifty years ago, when ninety percent of it was covered in rainforest, the vast majority of that lowland rainforest.

Since then, all of Borneo has been intensively logged and now only 6% is intact virgin lowland rainforest. Sarawak Governor over several decades Taib Mahmud accreted many hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks from logging companies and the exploitation of the rainforest was even more intensive in Indonesian Kalimantan. Much has been lost in Sabah but a higher proportion remains there. Certainly in Sarawak and Kalimantan, logging was accompanied by ruthless exploitation of native peoples who depended on the forest for their livelihood and whose land it really was. And this continues today.

Removal of the prime timber trees carried a large ecological cost but much of the wildlife could still survive in secondary forest.. The next stage was the oil palm plantations, which in many places seem to stretch to the horizon. Some species, such as hornbills, macaques and bearded pigs, can exploit these plantations whereas for others such as the near-extinct Bornean rhinos, they are as deserts.

It’s true that most countries in the West have devastated their ecology over a longer period and there are significant preserved areas in Sabah and Sarawak (not so much Kalimantan) but there are insufficient contiguous areas of protected rainforest to allow many species to flourish or even survive. It is particularly sad how rapid the destruction has been and how ruthless it has often been. Brunei has the most intact rainforest because their oil revenues mean they don’t bother with logging, but Brunei is small. Many native populations have also been displaced from their traditional lands and lifestyles without effective compensation, often with little alternative lifestyle choices and commonly without their permission (I refer mainly to Sarawak and Kalimantan, Sabah may be similar but I don’t know).

While there is a place for palm oil plantations to generate income in poor countries, the systematic destruction of the rainforest has been and remains a crime. Perhaps tourism will assist in funding rainforest preservation though that can be a double-edged sword as well.

Brown shrike.

We had arrived mid-afternoon and later headed off along a road near the lodge before dinner looking for birdlife, I saw a tree in flower off a sideroad so I headed for that (image above).

Scarlet-backed flowerpecker (and next two images).

This bird was in a nearby tree.

Baya Weaver.

Further down the road we found these three Baya Weaver nests, with the odd bird flying in and out.

Giant red flying squirrel (and next three images).

After dinner, we headed for the Rainforest Discovery Centre and the Canopy Walkway in the gathering gloom. We were hoping to see a giant flying squirrel in flight and were very luck to see multiple flights.

Here’s one about to launch.

Taking the images with a very long lens in the near dark was a challenging task. This is at 22,000 ISO for example.

Rufous-backed kingfisher.

Following on from the Canopy Walkway, we went for a walk in the rainforest after dark and these images are by torchlight.

White-lipped frog.

Millipede.

Juvenile keeled pit viper.

Poring Hot Springs and Sabah Tea Plantation

Jun16

Poring Hot Springs and Sabah Tea Plantation, Sabah, 6-7 May 2019.

Markets on the way between Mt Kinabalu Lodge and Poring Hot Springs. Mt Kinabalu in the background.

Heliconia Rostrata (native to Central and South America), Poring Springs.

We are now at Poring Hot Springs though we didn’t try the hot springs. I don’t think they would have been as compelling as an onsen in Japan in winter. What we did ckeck out was the butterfly farm there.

Rajah Brooke’s Birdwing Butterfly.

Common Tree Nymphs.

Unidentified butterfly.

Roadside shop outside the hot springs.

Rafflesia in flower.

This is Rafflesia Arnoldii in flower, the largest rafflesia and also the world’s largest flower. From memory I think this one was 78cm in diameter (31 inches). They can reach over 100cm and weigh 10 kilograms (22lb). This flowering happens very infrequently. It takes nine months for a bud to get to florescence, and then the flower lasts only two or three days. The flower has five petals, so there is actually two of them here. Rafflesiae are also know as corpse flowers on account of their smell. Swedish entomologist Eric Georg Mjöberg described the smell in 1928 as “a penetrating odour more repulsive than any buffalo carcass in an advanced stage of decomposition”. I cannot personally attest to that as I have very little sense of smell.

Sunset at Sabah tea Plantation (and following four images).

These images are taken from just outside the cottages we were staying in for the night at Sabah Tea Plantation..

I took a full range of lenses with me, expecting to be taking landscape shots as well as wildlife. This proved to not be the case. I didn’t find much cause for wide angel lenses in the rainforest, so apart from some street photography in Kote Kinabalu with me Fuji X100s, pretty well all my images were macro telephoto or long telephoto. Even these images, which are landscapes, were long telephoto.

Malaysian Forest Scorpion.

On the road near the restaurant after dinner, we encountered this large scorpion which demonstrated its ability to fluoresce under ultraviolet light.

Siti photographing Teetash, Mt Kinabalu in the background.

Rhinocerous beetle (Chalcosoma moellenkampi) on clothing.

This is a male because only the males have horns. They use them for fighting during the mating season and digging. They are also known for being incredibly strong for their size.

Murray Foote

Tag Archives: Sabah

Head in the Clouds (Lahad Datu to KK)

Sabah Monochromes

Tabin Day 3 – Last day in Sabah

Tabin Day 2 – Clouded Leopard

Tabin Day 1

Kinabatangan River Day 2 – Proboscis Monkeys

Kinabatangan River Day 1 – Pig Tailed Macaques

Sepilok Day 2 – Sun Bears and Orang Utans

Sepilok Day 1 – Giant Flying Squirrels

Poring Hot Springs and Sabah Tea Plantation