Nature Notes

This National Park is a lowland rain forest, with a range of services available, from camping to more luxurious arrangements.

The trip in is 3 hours by boat down the Trembeling River, and a few bird species can be seen from the boat, particularly Kingfishers.

The area around the resort has a number of excellent trails as well as some blinds. The resort area itself was good for Oriental Magpie Robin, Pink-necked Pigeon,and Oriental Hornbill.
There is a canopy walkway which gets you up at eye level with many species  and it is well worth a visit. It unfortunately was not open at ideal times for birders (10 AM to 2PM), and the operators  seem happier if you don’t linger. The best canopy bird was a Wallace’s Hawk Eagle which perched on a branch only a dozen meters in front of me.

It rained very heavily every night for 5-6 hours, but only a little during the day. This resulted in very muddy slippery trails, and made birding hard work, but well worth the effort.

One of the world’s most famous birding spots, Frasier’s Hill was originally one of the places where the British, in the colonial period, would go on holiday. The high elevation provided relief from the heat (something I could appreciate). (more…)

The city of Ipoh is surrounded by jutting limestone hills and it has a very spiritual quality, augmented by temples built into the cliff faces. I was fortunate to meet up with some of Ipoh’s birders and digiscopers, including Laurence Poh and Ooi Beng Yean, two of the very finest digiscopers in the world. (more…)