Finally we come around to my first independent trip of the year, this time with my girlfriend Laura to the stunning island of Borneo. Specifically we would spend three weeks exploring the state of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo, where most of the islands endemics can be found, as well as an excellent array of other goodies.
The flight was long, and not ideally timed to deal with jetlag. We arrived in Kuala Lumpur at 06:00 which was almost exactly the time to sleep in Western Europe. Still, we persevered and arrived in the city of Kota Kinabalu at 10:30, where we had a smooth experience picking up the car, then we were on our way.
We started our trip by driving the two hours to the town of Tambunan, where we checked into our hotel, took showers and caffeine, before double-back on ourselves half an hour to the Crocker Range or Gunung Alab Substation Road, where there was some upland forest and we could make a state on our altitudinal targets. There is supposed to be a hide here, but even with the grid reference we could not locate a trail that led to it. We did find an open area clearly used for bird feeding, but it was void of activity when we arrived. It did not help that it rained a considerable amount during the two hours exploring the site.
On the bird front we made a steady start to our birding despite the conditions. Our first target to fall was a particularly tricky Bornean Shortwing, followed by Bornean Whistler and an absolutely sodden Indigo Flycatcher. Exploring around the substation itself got us a few goodies, including our first Chestnut-hooded Laughingthrushes and a pair of very showy Mountain Blackeyes. Sadly the weather never relented and given our already exhausted condition, we decided to cut our losses and give ourselves a bit more time to recover for the subsequent days birding.
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