Well, this is the last batch we have so the feature will be suspended until I get more photos (I’m leaving for a week tomorrow, so hold on to any submissions for a week or so). Thanks.
Today we have the second batch of photos from Borneo by reader Loretta Michaels (her first batch, featuring mammals, is here). This selection highlights birds and reptiles. Loretta’s IDs and notes are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
My husband and I just got back from Borneo, a remarkable place for wildlife viewing (once you get over your jetlag from the long journey there…). Here’s a sampling of the bird and reptile pics.
Stork-billed Kingfisher (Pelargopsis capensis) – Largest of all Kingfishers in Borneo, it was a common sight:
Blue-eared Kingfisher (Alcedo meninting):
Pacific swallow (Hirundo javanica) – this one was a common sight near the first lodge we stayed at in Sepilok:
Rhinoceros Hornbill (Buceros rhinoceros) – these guys are big and loud, with remarkable bills. This one is the male, with the much larger bill:
White-crowned Hornbill (Berenicornis comatus):
Oriental Pied Hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris):
Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax):
Buffy fish owl (Ketupa ketupu) – the photo quality isn’t great, I’m afraid. We were having drinks one evening on the deck overlooking the river, when someone spotted this guy getting a drink. I was taking the pic when someone turned on their flashlight:
Crested Serpent Eagle (Spilornis cheela) – They often feed on snakes, giving them their name and are placed along with the Circaetus snake-eagles in the subfamily Circaetinae:
Saltwater Crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) – Very large, intimidating creatures. to put it mildly:
Bornean Keeled Green Pit Vipers (Tropidolaemus subannulatus) – Primarily arboreal and nocturnal, highly venomous. Juvenile males have rows of red-and-white bi-colored bars, while young females would sport narrow red-and-white rings. As the males get older, the red halves of the red-and-white spots fade. Adult females tend to have a complex pattern comprising a ground colour of cream, with broken bluish, greenish or turquoise bands, and a thick stripe of the same colour on the sides of the head:
Bornean Pit Viper (Craspedocephalus borneensis)? – I’m not sure about this white/silver snake. Our guide thought it was definitely a viper, but even he wasn’t sure what kind. It was climbing up the wall of a huge bat cave we were exploring (Gomantang Cave), probably looking for swiftlet nests (which are highly prized and harvested for bird’s nest soup in China). The Chinese have a huge interest in these nests, as well as the bat guano. They even have someone who sleeps inside a ramshackle hut in the middle of the cave to make sure guano poachers don’t come in – we had to wear masks just to handle 10 minutes in there because of the guano smell, I can’t imagine sleeping in there!:
Baby Green Sea Turtles (Chelonia mydas)- at the start of our trip, we went to Lankayan Island, which is a small island off of northeast Borneo that hosts a dive center and sits within a large marine reserve. It’s teeming with sea turtles, and also incubates turtle eggs before releasing them. Here’s a couple of the youngsters just before release:
One word :
Wow!
Thank you! Wonderful! How strange that many tropical birds are so spectacularly colored and adorned, and so exotic from my Central European viewpoint, but then among them there ‘s the heron and the kingfisher who look so much like their European relatives, one just as low-key, and the other just as colorful.
Very interesting! For the unknown snake, I will suggest the Cave Racer Snake. This is non-venomous.
I think you’re right, thanks! I guess I fixated on the word “viper” in my searches so this didn’t come up.
Excellent. Thanks!
Super!
Worth noting that the saltwater crocodiles are the largest extant reptiles.
Interesting. One interesting vignette from the trip: while making our way up one of the many rivers, we came upon the huge crowd of monkeys (there’s a pic in the mammal collection posted the other day). The monkeys, young and old, started jumping into the water and swimming to the other side. After about half had gotten across, the monkeys on the original side stopped moving while the folks who had already crossed were making all sorts of noise. We assumed they were yelling at their friends to keep coming. Then, we spotted first bubbles then the head of a huge crocodile that had come to the same spot, obviously hoping to have one of the monkeys for lunch. So the loud group may have been warning their friends to stay put.
That is so interesting!
Thank you, Loretta, the bird photos are especially wonderful. We did not pay attention to the birds when we were in Borneo, and obviously missed a lot.
Wonderful photos and information. Thanks for sharing these Loretta!
Incredible creatures, all of them, but those Kingfishers made me fall out of my chair!
Great photos! I went on a caving trip to Borneo many years ago, exploring some of the world’s largest caves. The main wildlife encounters I recall were with the bloodthirsty leeches in the jungle.
Oh yeah, I had to pull a few of those off me. When the trip organizer included “leech socks” in our welcome packet, I thought it was a joke (literally). Nope, the last place we went to everyone – hikers, guides, etc. – wore them. And it quickly became apparent why.