Borneo: Bristleheads & Orangutans
From: $1,000 CAD
The island of Borneo, once a land of the mythical and mystical, has rapidly become one of the most exciting and richest destinations for wildlife. There are still vast tracts of forest remaining, despite widespread logging and clearings, supporting a wonderful and truly exotic array of animals and plants. Broadbills and barbets, hornbills and trogons, bee-eaters and bristleheads, as well as flying foxes, colugos, slow loris, elephants, gibbons and monkeys including the bizarre Proboscis Monkey and the marvellous Orang-utan. Rising out of the lowland rainforests is the superb and spectacular Mount Kinabalu, over 4000 metres to its bare granite summit, the highest peak between the Himalayas and New Guinea, and an area of a high degree of endemism – birds with names like wren-babblers, stubtails, blackeyes, Mountain Serpent-Eagle, the rather unfriendly Kinabalu Friendly Warbler, and the Whitehead’s trio – trogon, broadbill and spiderhunter.
We start our Borneo birding tour in the modern city of Kota Kinabalu, where we encounter lowland coastal species, and then travel to the superb Danum Valley and the Borneo Rainforest Lodge, one of the most diverse and richest wildlife areas on the planet. We then move to a rainforest lodge for boatrides along the Kinabatangan River for kingfishers, darters, storks and Proboscis Monkeys – we will see an impressive number of species! A trip to Sepilok for Orang-utans and a surprisingly rich avifauna is followed by several days at Mount Kinabalu, with its unique and exciting fauna and flora. A visit to Borneo is a marvelous and unforgettable experience.
