Bukit Fraser Day Three: Soaked
Like yesterday, I started the day with some sunrise birding and I saw a few interesting birds around although it was very foggy so visibility was low. It’s great to be up with the siamang calls too.
While I was walking along just after sunrise I saw a small mammal moving through the undergrowth by the path which looked to me like a large dark vole. It then disappeared and ran across the path a few metres up and it was rather odd looking being dark grey, almost black, with a glossy coat a distinctly flat face and not much of a tail. Like an odd vole but fairly big. Looking through the field guide, I think there’s only one possibility: a Hoary Bamboo Rat. Bukit Fraser is just on the edge of the range map and I can’t find anything about small mammal surveys to see if they are known to occur here and I think it’s a bit unusual to be out in the day but I’m quite certain there’s nothing else it could be. What a cool mammal!
I then headed back to breakfast and found that I had an unwelcome guest: a leech. This time I found the leech sucking just above my ankle and getting quite fat with my blood. It wasn’t very pleasant to remove and the gushing blood looked quite spectacular. It was but a flesh wound. I got the leech socks out after that though.
After breakfast I headed to the Hill Partridge spot that I mentioned in the last post about hearing from a passing birder. I found the site easily enough and there seemed to be a fairly obvious ground-bird pathway going into the forest ,but I staked the site out for a while I didn’t see anything. It’s quite close to a house with a dog that was free to wander around and it did come up to have a sniff around which makes me wonder about how likely it is for a partridge to come out.
After that I tried a few of the trails, I had been birding along roads for the last two days but I decided to try the trails. There wasn’t a huge amount to see though and it was much more difficult birding than from the roads.
In the afternoon I decided to do the walk down to Jeriau Waterfall which is about 4km each way. On the way though I had a fantastic siamang sighting in the trees directly above me. A pair crossed the road by an overhanging tree right overhead followed by a youngster. They then sat in a tall tree just across the road and I noticed that there was not just the one youngster, but the female seemed to also have a baby clinging to its fur although it was difficult to get a clear view looking up and silhouetted. Another cool thing at the top of the walk down to the waterfall was a mud bank by the roadside with lots of holes for trapdoor spiders and tarantulas with some pretty big tarantulas in holes surrounded with silk which came up to the entrance when slightly touched by a stick. Really cool.
As I was walking though it did start to rain. I was expecting it this time though and was fully prepared to walk in the rain. But then it got heavier, and heavier, and there wasn’t really anywhere to shelter. I know I’ve been complaining a lot about rain, but I think this time it was genuinely unusually heavy because sections of the roadside were being washing onto the road and on the return walk up, I found that a bit of hillside had collapsed and was blocking half the road.
After a few minutes, I was soaked. To the point that I would not have been more wet if I was actually swimming in water. My trousers were really heavy and my shoes, despite being waterproof, had filled up with water. I was near the bottom of the walk down to the waterfall when it got really heavy and at the bottom was a small shelter where I could wait for the rain to die down a bit. This however, was when I discovered a design flaw with my rain mac in heavy rain. It has waterproof pockets in it where I transferred the stuff out of my trouser pockets to keep them dry. However in very heavy rain, the water funnels down my sides and a stream of water is funnelled into the pockets which had filled up with water. There was one major casualty from this: my phone. I turned it off and pulled out the battery and tried to dry as well as possible when everything is wet and put it in a plastic bag to try and keep it dry until I got back, although it wasn’t looking good.
I stayed in the shelter until the rain was just normal thunderstorm low pressure shower strength rather than ridiculous high-pressure fire house strength and had a quick look at the waterfall before heading back up. Although the slight lull didn’t last for very long and it was soon heavy again and it was quite a difficult walk back up because of all the water weight and the fact that I was walking against the current on the road with a few centimetres of water at its shallowest point. I made it back to the room absolutely soaked and once I had wrung out my wet clothes I checked on the water damaged phone, but no luck. I’m hoping that it dried out, but I think it might be dead. It’s not an expensive phone and quite old, but it’s really annoying because I have everything set up on it. Luckily though, because my phone was so old and occasionally unreliable (although I doubt most phones would have coped with that water treatment) my parents insisted I carry a spare phone, a fairly cheap phone but a smartphone nonetheless, so that I could stay in contact. So although it’s not set up with all my ebooks and podcasts and music and things, which is annoying, I do still have a phone with a data connection which makes me feel much more secure when travelling so I do have contact with the outside world if I have to. I’m still hoping my proper phone dries out. It could be worse though, and that’s what travel is about: turning dreams, both good and bad, into anecdotes. I really hope my shoes dry out by tomorrow though.
I was going to go out spotlighting, but it’s still lightly raining and it’s a bit annoying to spotlight in the rain and when everything’s wet because all the water droplets are shiny like eyeshine. I’m quite tired too. Tomorrow is my last full day here at Bukit Fraser and I’ve got the morning of the day after too. I would have spent longer, but RM100 +RM10 tourism tax per night is really steep. I have to remember that four nights is decent though, and on a normal length trip it would be a good length of time.
Today also marks one week since I left Poland at the start of this trip. Although there have been numerous annoyances and problems already in just this week, I’m really enjoying the trip and I’m so pleased that I’ve done it. I always knew there would be ups and downs and this trip is definitely making me more self-sufficient. I was worried that at the end of the first week I’d be wishing that the trip was shorter and would be wanting to go home soon, but I’m not, and I’ve another 15 more weeks to go which I’m still just as excited about.
New birds seen:
287) Little Cuckoo-dove
288) Slaty-backed Forktail
289) Malayan Laughingthrush
290) Rufous-browed Flycatcher
291) Barred Cuckoo-dove
292) Greater Yellownape
293) Blue-eared Barbet
294) Black-eared Shrike-babbler
295) Chestnut-crowned Warbler
296) Emerald Dove
297) Common Green Magpie
298) Javan Cuckooshrike
299) Black Eagle
300) Buff-breasted Babbler
301) Stripe-throated Bulbul
Mammal:
36) Hoary Bamboo Rat
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