An Island and a Beach: Looking for Filipinos
I started the morning with a more leisurely start than usual at 7AM. I noticed that on the wall they have a world map with an unusual projection that I don't recognise. It's Malaysia centred with a split in the Atlantic and it looks kind of like a Lambert Cylindrical but it's not because it's a normal shape but because I'm not used to a split in the Atlantic I can't use the shape of Greenland as the judge that I normally would on what projection it is. Nice projection though!
The boats to the islands depart when they're full, and mine left at about 8:50. My attire wasn't exactly typical for either place I visited. Khaki trousers, hiking boots, a camo shirt, and binoculars on a harness around my neck not exactly making me fit in. I arranged my return from the island at 2:15 because by then it would be sweltering anyway and by that point I would have either seen my target or not and the species I was looking for was Philippine Scrubfowl and reports all said it was either extremely easy to see or not seen at all. It was already really hot by 9 though. The sort of hot where I'd be winding down rainforest birding.
It's not a long ride, about 15 minutes, or an expensive on at RM30 return, and most of the boat was filled with a large Chinese tour group, most of whom screeched at the slightest bump. The driver then amused himself seemingly by hitting the waves as hard as he possibly could, which I thought was funny. The whole area is a marine park which is good obviously although the toruisry areas around the beech seem to have a lot of disturbance. There's accommodation on the island too run by, you guessed it! Sutera Sanctuary Lodges (the same as on Mount Kinabalu). A minor annoyance was that the boat company made me keep my life jacket while I was on the island although I just hooked it onto my bag no problem.
Away from the tourist beach area, the island is forested with mangrovey plants and palms. I went along the jungle trek trail and didn't see any megapodes, though I saw some mounds and there was plenty of movement in the leaf litter but it was all from skinks.
I did find a super cool big hermit crab in the forest and a Mangrove Whistler along with some Pied Trillers but the observant amongst you will have noticed that none of those is a megapode.
The jungle track goes along the spine of the island and up the hill giving a nice view of the sea. I looked out for pelagic birds or marine mammals but there weren't any. I wasn't expecting any either, the sea is too shallow here.
I had listened to the megapode call on Xeno Canto beforehand in case any called and it's a really odd distinctive almost cat like hoot. At about 10, and hour in, I head one in the distance but quite far off. There are two trails on the island, the jungle trek which is a trail through the forest and the jogging track which is flat and concreted. I did the megapodeless jungle trek first and then the jogging track on the way back which is concreted but still devoid of people and through the forest. At the end of the island is a viewpoint over the sea.
I went along the jogging track being as sneaky as possibly with a lifejacket dangling from my backpack and then heard a cat-like yowl quite close. The megapode! It was calling every few minutes and I used the sound to track where along the track it was. I didn't think it would respond to a tape and that was correct; it wouldn't. And I could go down to see I either because the terrain went steeply down to the sea and was quite densely vegetated. The steepness of the terrain worked to my advantage though because it was a straight view down to the sea so I just stood there scanning carefully with my binoculars down to where the sound came from until I found the bird moving slightly quite far down in the vegetation. Megapodes really are wonderful birds and the whole thing was really great, out on a small forested island off Borneo searching for a megapode.
It took just under two hours to get that sighting of my total five hours on the island and after watching that bird for a while and confirming that it definitely wasn't going to come closer to the track and I went along to try and find another. Ideally in a less densely vegetated area so I could try and get pictures. I did actually manage another view and although very shy and skittish, I got a great view of the dull browny body and red facial skin as well as some record shot quality photos (perfectly clear what the animal is, just bad pixtures). I do really love seeing ground birds actually. Especially awesome ones like megapodes.
Some other nice birds included a Mangrove Blue Flycatcher and somewhat unexpectedly from an offshore island(possibly?): White-crowned Shama and Emerald Ground Dove. I was looking out for pigeons because there are a number of pigeon species that move nomadically between the islands off the coast of Borneo depending on food availability. I hadn't seen much mention of pigeons on any birding trip reports from Manukan either so I wasn't expecting any, but just before midday I saw a pigeon that looked very similar to a Green Imperial but not quite and the pal vent colour was diagnostic: a Grey Imperial Pigeon. Great! The presence of one nomadic island pigeon gave me hope for others; white-throated and pied are possible and there's a remote chance for Nicobar. But I didn't see any others.
Manukan Island is definitely worth a visit though, decent chance of megapode and a lovely little island with nice quiet forest covering the two thirds of it that isn't beach resort. And for an RM30 return boat (+RM20 park entry fee) that's pretty good! The sea breeze means it's not insanely hot in the middle of the day too, although it is insanely mosquito ridden which even copious amounts of DEET wouldn't keep off. Manukan is only the second largest island in the Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park and the bigger one is the far bigger Gaya Island which I think has Proboscis Monkeys but it's much more expensive to go there and the megapode is the one species I wanted from here anyway. As a side note, Gaya also has a large refugee settlement on it of Philippine refugees who are long term stateless people because the Malaysian government refuses to accept them and grant them asylum and insists they're illegal immigrants. You can actually see the settlement from the KK seafront which, according to the Malaysian government, doesn't exist.
Anyway, it was rainy and very windy and stormy in the afternoon so I was a bit worried that my boat wouldn't be able to depart on time. I got absolutely soaked in the rain too of course. Who needs to go swimming to get totally soaked? There are lots of people snorkeling but there seems to be very little point because the reef seems totally destroyed around the tourist areas. With just shoals of little fish. Not great for a marine park.
The storm did not concern the boat driver whatsoever and I got the boat back at 2:15. I then had lunch at Jesselton Point because I has just had snacks on th island and called a very handy RM8 Grab to go straight to the Tanjung Aru beach for Blue-naped Parrots. Grab is so much better than a taxi because the cars are always very clean and nice and they just come and go exactly where you want them. And they also won't try and rip you off and they have to be pleasant so you give them a good rating. It's a reasonably distance from the city centre (it's near the airport) to Tanjung Aru Beach and there's no way I would have got a taxi down to 8 ringgit. Oh, and the rain had cleared by this point too.
At the beach it took a full ten minutes to find the parrots, and it would have been a lot quicker if I hadn't been distracted by the likes of Collared Kingfishers, Brahminy Kites, Green Imperial Pigeons, and a Little Green Pigeon. Birding can be tough sometimes. Blue-naped Parrots are huge though! They're the size of one of the small-medium sized macaw species, and they're bright green with yellow on the wings, blue on the head and nape, and a massive bright red bill. Really brightly coloured chunky birds.
Blue-naped Parrots are primarily a Philippine species, hence the title of this post, but there are scattered populations around the North East coast of Borneo like the one at Tanjung Aru beach. I believe some of the populations descent from hurricanes/typhoons and others are escapes. It's quite a threatened species but there's a decent colony here of about 50 birds I believe with the population limited by the number of nesting holes in the Casuarina trees that line the beach. And the parrots just live in a suburban park which runs along the beach.
Out at sea, as well as a White-bellied Sea Eagle in the flight path of incoming planes, there were a couple of seabirds! Two Black-naped Terns fishing just off shore.
I spent a couple of hours at Tanjung Aru Beach enjoying the parrots and the other birds as well as the large agamid lizards. Nice view of the planes landing and taking off too including the cool ATR72s and Twin Otters that MASWings operates on regional routes. As the sun was setting it started to begin drizzling and I got an RM9 Grab right back to Borneo Backpackers.
New birds seen:
Philippine Megapode
Grey Imperial Pigeon
Blue-naped Parrot
Black-naped Tern
