Macro Magic from Borneo

The island of Borneo is one of the largest islands in Southeast Asia. In fact, it is the third largest island in the world. Only Greenland and New Guinea are larger. Its land area is approximately 743,330 sq.km. Borneo has the distinction of being the only island in the world that is shared by three countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei.

The southern two thirds of the island is controlled by Indonesia and is known as Kalimantan, which translates as “diamond river”. Two of Malaysia’s states, Sabah (“the land below the wind”) and Sarawak (“antimony”), are situated on the northern coast of Borneo. Borneo is well-known for its rainforests, its multiethnic population, and its abundant natural resources.

Once completely covered by dense tropical jungle, Borneo went through massive scales of deforestation during the 1980s and the 90s owing to intensive logging and diversion of large tracts of forest for oil palm plantations. Albeit this, the tropical forests do exist today as they cling on to survive by a tender thread. The expanse though, is just about a fraction of what existed.

Nevertheless, the forests of Borneo are still among the most biodiverse on the planet. Some of the types of forests in Borneo are the tropical rainforests, mangroves swamp forests, peat swamp forests, montane forests, heath forests and dipterocarp forests.

These physically diverse habitats provide different conditions for different organisms to thrive thus supporting around 15,000 plant species, more than 1400 species of amphibians, birds, fish, mammals, reptiles & unknown varieties of insects.

Having got back from an amazing trip, I do have a lot of experiences and images to share 😃. This post is an attempt of mine at showcasing my first contact, my first experience with the legendary rainforests of Borneo and a few of its denizens. Most definitely, this is but just a tip of the iceberg.

First off, a big shout out & thank you to our amazing guides, turned good friends, Razis and Nisha. They run “RN Empire Travel & Tours” out of Sandakan, Malaysia. They are very good at what they do. The entire tour was so exceptionally well managed that I wouldn’t be far off saying that this trip to Borneo ranks very high among the best experiences that I have had so far. And, I have traveled quite a bit, so trust me when I am saying so 😃. If you ever want to travel to Malaysia, be it wildlife or otherwise, please get in touch with them.

Though this trip to Borneo was predominantly focused on birds, having ventured that far, we had to try and soak in as much of the biodiversity on offer as possible. Hence the reason to include a couple of sessions dedicated to exploring the lesser fauna of the Bornean rainforests.

In a tropical rainforest, there is life every step of the way, right from high up in the canopies to the dense undergrowth on the forest floor. In fact, the undergrowth supports a huge diversity of creatures that are otherwise hidden from the eyes of a casual observer, secreted on the tall tree barks or among the leaf litter. Once you start observing keenly, things begin to unravel.

Our first exploration was a night walk at the Kinabalu National Park. A beautiful high elevation rainforest, very reminescent of our own Western Ghats.

As we set out on a chilly night there was a bit of a drizzle here and there but nothing overly concerning. A local forest Ranger had accompanied us on the trail. The night walk began with a bang!

First sighting was that of a beautiful pit viper, the Kinabalu brown pit viper.

After having our fill of some good images of the pit viper, we moved on and came by many frog species. Horned frogs among them were the highlight. Such unique extensions above their eyes akin to horn like structures. There are many species of horned frogs in Borneo.

Some of the lovely frogs that we could photograph :

We came across another beautiful snake called the ‘Steubing slug snake`, a snake that feeds on slugs. These non-venomous snakes have specialized fangs on their lower jaw to extract snails from their shells. Wonderfully colored and patterned.

We were coming to the end of our walk. It was a pretty productive one for sure. As we were heading back and were close to boarding our vehicle, the Ranger called out in sheer excitement saying that he had found another snake. Our guide Razis was super excited too.

The snake that we were looking at was a Krait, the Red-headed Krait!! What a catch that was! Brilliantly colored for a krait I would say. At first glance, I thought it was some kind of a coral snake. Lovely individual. Both Razis and the Ranger were saying that this one was very special & quite rare to come by. They themselves hadn’t seen one in a long time.

After that very happening night exploration we went back to our rooms, to check for any leeches, wash up and hit the sack.

The next night’s walk was going to be at another place called the Poring Hot Springs. It is a large tract of private forest.

We were all set to head out and the rain started to come down, was quite relentless showing no signs of abating at all. It was to be a true tropical rainforest experience this time around. Pretty apt to the name of the place, Poring, it was pouring indeed.

Albeit the rain, the walk was quite fruitful. Life just thrives in the undergrowth, such amazing diversity. We got to see some lovely frogs, lizards, geckos, sleeping birds, a snake too, high up in the canopy. We also got one very interesting toad.

Some images that I could manage :

The highlight of the trail was the lovely bio-luminescent mushrooms. The kind of mushrooms that glow in the dark, a process referred to as bio-luminescence. Thanks to Razis for identifying them. With all our torches turned off, in complete darkness, we could see the lovely, iridescent green glow emanating from the mushrooms. Nature’s magical wonder!

Without proper gear it was going to be a tough task to capture images of them. I tried my best to steady myself against a fallen log and managed a couple of images, all in pouring rain which was making things all the more difficult.

However, as you might have guessed, I wasn’t completely satisfied :-) My mind was racing about a possibility of coming back here the next night to capture this beauty in its truest sense. With the support of Razis, we worked out a plan to come down the following night. It seemed like a far fetched idea looking at the heavy downpour that we had just experienced. But, we decided to take a chance.

The next night, we landed up at Poring Hot Springs praying to the heavens. Luck seemed to be with us. A light drizzle at times but no downpour, nothing close to what we experienced the previous night there. The skies were pretty calm :-)

We reached the spot of the mushrooms and took our time making some nice images. Nothing can match the wonder of Nature, the sheer magnificence of her creation.

Though it was just a few sessions for the lesser fauna that we could squeeze into our itinerary, the sessions were so highly engaging & bountiful. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and also the process of sharing the same with you via this post.

Hope you enjoyed reading through as well. Please do share your thoughts by dropping in a comment below.

See you on the next one.