Borneo; Day 7 - Sepilok

   Today would be our only full day birding and exploring the Rainforest Discovery Centre in Sepilok. In order to make the most of it, the previous afternoon we had purchased an early morning birding ticket, allowing us to enter the site before the official opening time, so we were able to access the site at 06:00 and then went straight to the canopy walkway.

  We had been on the walkway less than five minutes when we found our first major target of the day with the White-crowned Hornbill sitting in the canopy, in the gloom of a dense tree. This is possibly the most tricky Hornbill on Borneo, so we were thrilled to get it so quickly. Sadly the rest of the morning on the canopy walkway was much slower. Although I got an excellent selection of new birds, all were common with notable highlights including Green Iora, Blue-throated Bee-eater and Raffles’s Malkhoa. The highlight of this early morning was a Sunda Colugo, which was roosting on a tree adjacent to the walkway with its infant, offering much better views than we’d had the previous night.

  After breakfast, at 08:30 we started walking the trails. We of course started on the Pitta Trail, but it was extremely quiet and we saw very little. After a short break to take Laura back to the hotel for a rest, I continued by walking the Ridge Trail and then the full Pitta Trail. Here I had a bit more luck, with a pair of Rhinoceros Hornbills in the canopy overhead, and I managed to tape out the stunning Black-crowned Pitta, which is one of the main birding attractions at this site.

  At midday I returned to the accommodation for a short break during the heat of the day, before both Laura and I returned to the RDC to have lunch at the restaurant there and then continue birding. During lunch we had a great view of a Water Monitor Lizard sat in the middle of the path, before we were shown two different Bornean Green Pit Vipers. After lunch we returned to the walkway and found it a little more lively than earlier. We added Black-winged Flycatcher-Shrike, and from the tallest tower we were able to see the nest of a Wallace’s Hawk-Eagle. Yesterday the adult bird had been hunched down and facing away so impossible for me to identify, but today it was stood up offering excellent views.

  For the final hour we walked the Kingfisher Trail and then back to the canopy walkway. The forest was quiet, although Yellow-eared Spiderhunter and Hairy-backed Bulbul were both nice new species. The evening really peaked however when we were leaving, as a ranger told us about a mother and infant Orangutan in the trees at the car park. We headed straight there and were treated to really nice views of them as they made their nest for the night, all whilst being mobbed by a troop of Pig-tailed Macaques. Not as good as yesterdays encounter but still very enjoyable.