I kicked off the first day of the Borneo Bird Festival (http://www.borneobirdfestival.com/Home/) in grand style, rising before dawn and heading off into the Rainforest Discovery Center (http://www.forest.sabah.gov.my/rdc/) trails to get a feel for the area. Extremely well developed trails I was thinking, yet they were a bit excessive, very much like a road... turns out that it was a road... leading away from the reserve. It was still dark out yet, what can I say, a headlamp is only so bright. Guess I should have done a more complete recon the day before. No problem, my trusty Garmin and the local GPS maps I downloaded illustrated the obvious in a kilometer and a bit. There were a lot of birds to be spotted as the sun was rising on the way back so its all good. Furthermore when discussing the area that I had covered during the days birding (leaving out the accidental aspect of course) the other birders were impressed with my additional explorations.
The festival brings a large number of Sabah birders, bird photographers bird guides from all over the province, the best of the best come here to participate in the competitions. Huge bragging rights for the winners. There are several specialist speakers brought in as well as a few photography experts, add a smattering of expats and a few tourists and you have an very eclectic group. The array of cameras, lenses and accessories was astounding.
The trails at the Rainforest Discovery Center are excellent and range from 500m to 3Km, I covered 11 km the first day and only hit the same trails due to core interconnections. There are three observation towers, plenty of interpretive signs in english as well as a fantastic canopy walk. The highlight of the canopy walk was watching the Red Giant Flying Squirrel coming out at dusk and soaring across the sky. These guys can cover amazing distances.
Continued to work on honing my digiscope craft somewhat better results but nothing really that is worthy of a post to the interweb. Great day of birding and the mid day lectures were excellent. I was lucky to meet some fantastic people and made several valuable contacts. The authors of the premier Bird guides for Borneo were here so it was great to get my books signed. More on the amazing people here later
