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Kuching Trip  25th May to 5th June 2008

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29th May 2008 Thursday

BAKO NATIONAL PARK

Our program for the morning is a jungle trak to see wildlife after breakfast.

To view wildlife in the nature one must move slowly and keep silent.

Unfortunately this simple park rule the young members of my group were unable to observe.  'Wild life' grow up in a concrete city have difficulties to adjust to the life of nature in just a 2 nights trip.

Proboscis monkeys are often seen during seen during early morning or late afternoon. After breakfast we walked to the mangrove forest. We were lucky. Without too long we saw them, the proboscis monkeys. About 10 of them hanging in the trees playing and jumping from tree to tree. But they always stay up high and far on the tree.

Spotting  the proboscis monkeys is not easy. Not even  to see it clearly even with a binocular.

Proboscis monkey is endemic to Borneo. That means Borneo Island is the only place in the world to see the proboscis.

They live in the mangroves forests along rivers, in small groups. Due to large-scale deforestation in Sabah and Sarawak,  their natural habitat has largely disappeared and now there are only few thousands remaining.

Mangrove forest in Bako National Park
Mangrove forest in Bako National Park.

It was here in this part of the mangrove forest we spoted the above family of  Proboscis monkey.
In Bako it is possible to see most of the different type of vegetation found in Borneo. IThis park has a wide range of vegetation  such as peat swamp forests, padang (grassland) vegetation, mangrove forest, dipterocarp forest, cliff vegetation beach vegetation.

Silver Leaf MonkeyA family of Silver Leaf Monkey

The Silver Leaf Monkey

11:40 AM : Back to our hostel, suddenly I heard loud noice from the forest tree tops following by chasing. Obviously it a conflict between 2 groups of monkey.  The weaker group escarp from the forest canopy and came down to the ground running toward the sea and found sanctuary at a couple of small trees where I could see them and snapped these pictures (see photos).  From his behavior and size I could identify this one is the male and leader (at left) The rest are his wives and children. (How lucky he is to have so many.) The fight and run earlier was his daily routing protecting his wives from kidnapping by another strong male and escape from the dense forest to the seafront with the whole family. (What a miserable tought life he has for the rest of his life.)

I found these written reference about them "...The groups are highly territorial and will act aggressively towards other individuals (Bernstein, 1968). Males will keep other group males out of the range of the group (Bernstein, 1968; Furuya, 1961-2). Conflicts will usually occur at the areas of home range overlap (Bernstein, 1968). ..."

These Silvered Leaf Monkey has dark, silver-tipped fur and a dark face. This species of monkey are found in groups of up to 10 individuals feeding on young leaf shoots and forest fruits in swampy areas, riverine forests and back-mangrove. Silver Leaf Monkey are found in Indochina, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo.

Rock Formation Bako National Park

12:00 noon Strolling the beach. We were the only visitors at this secluded beach with panoramic rock formations. Between Teluk Pandan Kecil and Teluk Paku there are good view of several interesting ocean rock formations. We did not go there because it require a boat ride to that side of Bako National Park.  For those interested to go, local boats is available for hired from the Park Headquarters and journey will take about 30 minutes.

Eroded rock formations

Photo left : Mosquito Larvae in a rock hole.

On the rocks along the beach are holes eroded by sea water.  Rain water would top up the hole that already had some remain of sea water. Before the holes was dried up by the hot sun, female mosquitoes would come and lay their eggs.  It is not surprise to find Mosquito Larvaes in these holes with water, but what surprise me was that the water taste salty after I test the water from an index finger dipped into the water.

Obviously, in order to survives, this species of mosquito has adapted to salt and become resistant to  sea water.

AntsAnts
AntsEntire army of ant colony moving from one location to another location carrying mud like ball in their mouth. Perhaps these ball  they are carrying are food they found nearly by.

Ants, like the bees, is a social insects which has advantages over solitary insects such as grasshopper. The presence of a large number of family members can be organized more efficiently in work through division of labor and task jobs. Another advantage is the possibility of sharing information, especially communicating where food can be found.

A small percentage of the ants is different from the other by having a long sharp horn at the fore head. This ant (photo left) is most probably a solder ant.

Giant spiky caterpillar with yellow spots.  Hundreds of them roost on a tree trunk just beside the beach. They remain still on the tree with color and pattern matching to the tree trunk that make them unnoticed when one pass by. Shirley was the one who first saw them.  As long as 10CM, this could be the caterpillar of a giant moth.

We spend most of the afternoon at the beach

6:30 PM Look at what Jerolyn had found !  A huge white jelly fish washed ashore.  The diameter of this jelly fish is wider then the shoulder length of Yin.  It is about 18 inches width.

We read about warning notice at the park office to visitor be award when swimming at the sea because now is the jelly fish season.  But we are not worried about this white jelly fish because it was death and this jelly is a harmless species that has no poisonous sting.

Many year ago during a trip to a costal town I met a Chinese merchant who collect jelly fish from local fishermen. He then process into salted jelly fish for export to Japan and Taiwan.  If I am not mistaken, this is the eatable jelly fish we found today.  We did not bring this jellyfish to our dinning table of course. We return it to the sea (though death) and Yin post for a snap shoot for remembrance before the tide wash it back to the sea again.

shell-dwelling hermit crabs

While we sit at the veranda enjoying the suiting  cool sea breeze, a bat repeatedly flew over the lamp above our hear (see photo left) for flying insects.

Bako is a fascinating place not only for bird watching but also for bat watching. Various bats species are found at different location of Bako jungle. They are either fruit eating or insect eating bats but no blood sucking bats in Bako. A few species could be seen in day while most of the species active only at night. The lamp poles along  the foot path in front the hostel attract swam of night flying insects after dark.  These are the spots where insects eating bats species fly around at night.
This trip is a very rewarding Nature Study trip for our whole family.  Never before in our life that with a span of 3 days nights  we experienced different environment, seeing so many different living insects and animals. Such experience and knowledge we could not get from our schools. Thought Television channels offer much more visual images of the wild life but we could not get the real feeling,  the real close encounter.

A check list of common wildlife that visitors can easily sight in Bako:

Wildlife

Have you sighted ?

 Remarks :
Borneo Bearded Pigs Yes  
Otters    
Monitor lizards    
Squirrels    
Mouse deer    
Palm civet cats    
Slow loris    
Pangolin    
Bats Yes  
Tarsier    
Proboscis monkeys Yes ! Of cause  
Silver leaf monkeys Yes  
Long-tailed macaques Yes  
Snakes Yes  
     
Frogs Yes  
     
Cicadas Yes  
Dragonflies and Damselflies Yes  
     
Flying lemur or culago    
Owls    
Over 150 species of birds    
     
Mudskippers    
Crabs    
Shell-dwelling hermit crabs Yes  
Jelly Fish Yes  

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Thursday, November 13, 2008 10:16:41 AM