In the morning we
walked up to the café for breakfast. I was walking ahead of the
others when a snake crossed the path between us – another of the
long, thin stripy snakes we saw yesterday. At breakfast, an Italian
couple were forced to share their meal with a marauding macaque.
After breakfast, we
packed up and walked to the boat office, which is adjacent to the
café. While we were waiting to get the word that our boat had
arrived I went to get a few final photos of the viper in the tree
next to the office, but it wasn't there. After a bit of a look around
I discovered it in the low branches of a small shrub not far away –
a rather disconcerting height for anyone passing close to the shrub.
The tide was much
higher this morning than when we arrived, so we were able to leave
via the little dock, which is at the start of the mangrove boardwalk,
which is, naturally, back the way we had just walked. As we reached
the small bridge over the mangrove channel, a large male macaque
suddenly emerged from the undergrowth, ran over to Kate and started
trying to grab our food bag from her. She let out a yelp and grabbed
the bag back and the macaque retreated a little, giving her a chance
to quickly join the rest of us at the stairs to the boat. The macaque
continued to lurk nearby, eyes fixed on the food bag.
When we arrived at
the office on the river, we disembarked and walked out the front to
the carpark, but our promised ride wasn't waiting for us, so we
chatted to a Belgian couple who were waiting for the bus back to
Kuching. We were just starting to worry that the car wasn't going to
arrive when it did – not a taxi, just a guy in his car. There's
nowhere to eat in Kubah, the next national park we're going to –
but there is a kitchen in our 'hostel', so we asked the driver if he
could stop at a supermarket on the way, preferably one with an ATM as
we were also getting low on cash. He said he knew just the place and
soon enough we were piling out of the car and running up and down the
aisles of a pretty decent supermarket stocking up on pasta, tuna and
bread.
Not long after, we
made it to the park and the driver dropped us at the entrance near a
little booth, where checked in and bought our park entry tickets. We
were then shown to our accommodation – the upper floor of a large
wooden building on the side of a hill with three bedrooms (with two
bunks and a fan each) and a kitchen and bathroom. It had obviously
seen better days but was more than comfy enough for us, particularly
as we appear to have the whole place to ourselves.
The information
sheet we had been given at the park entrance informed us that the
park is home to about 60 species of frog, and we decided that we
would set ourselves a challenge – to try to see at least ten
species while we were there. To help us in reaching this goal, there
was apparently a frog pond just up the road, where several species
were said to congregate at night.
Once we had settled
in, we set off up the rather steep road towards the pond. When we
finally got there, we immediately began to have second thoughts about
our challenge. Although the pond area is quite large (and surrounded
by a wooden boardwalk), it obviously hasn't rained much lately and it
has shrunk to a small muddy pool at the centre. It looked as though
it was going to be a bit more difficult than we though to reach the
ten frog mark, so I decided to take the challenge on just for myself
– and to make things interesting Kate offered to buy me a bottle of
nice wine if I achieved it.
Our next destination
was a waterfall and swimming hole, about an hour's walk down from the
road through some lovely rainforest. Along the way, we noticed some
large pieces of a pale, papery material beside the path. On closer
inspection, these proved to be some of the most impressive seeds I've
ever laid eyes on. The large brown seed at the centre was set between
two membranous wings, creating a glider with a wingspan of about 20
centimetres or so. The girls grabbed a few and took turns launching
them down the slope and several of them glided for prodigious
distances.
When we reached the
falls we stripped off and went for a dip in what proved to be a
pretty pathetic, shallow swimming area – no matter, it was just
good to wash the sweat off for a little while. Exploring the rocks
around the falls I found my first frog species – a few
black-spotted rock frogs (#1), a species that seem to be present in
every rainforest stream in Southeast Asia.
We took a different
route back to the hostel – through the forest the whole way rather
than back along the road. It was hard work – with a lot of pretty
steep uphill hiking – but I was cheered by the discovery of several
forest dragons. These large lizards are close relatives of the dragon
that I did my PhD research on, so it was a bit of a thrill to see
them. We also passed a lot of large palms – apparently Kubah
National Park is a real centre of palm diversity. When we got back to
the hostel, we went for a quick swim in a strange pool that's being
constructed in the stream that runs behind the accommodation. A wall
has been built to dam the stream to create a large shallow pool, into
which water flows via three pipes set up like showers along one side.
In the evening, I
cooked some pasta for dinner and then bid the others farewell as I
set off to see if I could find my nine other frogs. As I walked up
the hill, I heard something (a frog?) making a single-note call from
the forest nearby. I turned off to investigate, walking downslope to
where there was a small creek. I clambered around for a while looking
for the source of the call, but it seemed to be coming from high in a
tree, so I gave up and tried scanning the rocks in the creek instead
– and sure enough, my torch beam soon picked out a medium-sized
brown frog: #2.
Continuing up the
road, I heard frogs calling from the forest, but the calls were quite
widely spaced and intermittent, so I decided not to check them out.
After a while, however, I heard what appeared to be quite a few frogs
calling from right beside the road. From the pitch and volume of the
calls, I guessed that they were quite small and when I shone my torch
on the places from which they seemed to be calling, I couldn't see
anything. Indeed, I was able to get right over a calling frog, my ear
close to the leaf litter, but still I couldn't see it. So, finally, I
took the only remaining option. I narrowed down the location of one
individual and then started to move the leaves away to see if
anything turned up. Nothing. But wait - something very small and
brown moved as I moved another leaf and there it was, a frog so small
it wouldn't have covered the nail of my pinkie: #3.
By now I was close
to the pond, so when I had taken a few photos of the miniscule frog,
I headed over there. The forest seemed very quiet – I could barely
hear anything calling – and I started to have serious doubts about
my chances of hitting the ten-frog goal. When I turned off the road
and into the forest, however, I started to hear a few calls, and when
I got onto the boardwalk and shone my torch down into the leaf litter
around the pool of water at the centre, I spotted a couple of frogs
sitting on logs and sticks. I clambered down and went to work
photographing each amphibian I came across. Not being any sort of
expert on Southeast Asian frogs I wasn't sure that I could tell the
different species apart, so I figured I could go through the photos
later and try to work out if I had reached my goal. Although I
started to try to keep a tally, I quickly lost count. There were
certainly several different species – from small green-and-brown
ones up to some enormous beige treefrogs that would have almost
filled my hand.
I made numerous
circuits of the pond, occasionally straying a bit too close to the
pool in the centre in my pursuit of a particularly photogenic
individual and beginning to sink into the soft mud around its
margins. There was one species that eluded me, however. I quickly
dubbed it the fart frog because its call resembled the explosive
squelch of comedy flatulence. Although it was common and called
loudly and often, I just couldn't seem to spot one – the fact that
they seemed to be calling from the muddy area next to pool didn't
help – and I began to think that they must be calling from under
the fallen leaves the carpeted the mud. Often, when I was looking for
one of these frogs I would spot another nearby – a common brown
striped treefrog. And finally, after much searching, I made the
connection – these striped frogs were the fart frogs and I managed
to get a few photos of some calling.
After a few more
circuits of the pond I decided that I had probably seen and
photographed all of the frogs there (it was about 10pm by then), so I
grabbed all of my stuff and started to head back down to the hostel,
which is when I spotted another forest dragon – a green one asleep
on a tree branch. It was in an awkward spot, so it took me some time
to get photos that I was happy enough with.
On the way back down
the road, I shone my torch into the trees in the hope of spotting
some sort of nocturnal mammal. And sure enough, there, beaming out
from the canopy was the sort of eye-shine you dream about - two
orange beacons glowing among the leaves. I turned my camera on the
eyes and tried to get both lens and torch aimed at them so I could
work out what they belonged to, but all I could see was the eyes
themselves, surrounded by darkness. I pulled out my binoculars, but
the lenses were so dirty that they weren't any help either. By the
time I had cleaned them, the animal had started to make its escape
and I chased it through the forest for a little while but sadly never
got close enough to figure out what it was. (I spoke to a guide a few
days later and he suggested it was probably a civet.)
A bit further down
the road I heard another one-note call coming from the forest nearby
and I decided once again to investigate. The calls seemed to be
coming from a number of different spots, so I chose one and started
moving towards it, stopping every now and then, turning off my torch
and waiting for it to call again so I could continue to home in on
it. During one of these quiet moments I happened to look down at the
ground and saw something utterly extraordinary. The leaf litter
around me was covered in a bioluminescent fungus of some sort and the
ground was aglow. It was so extensive and so bright that it looked
like the forest floor was being lit by some particularly strong
dappled moonlight.
As I closed in one
of the calls, which seemed, again, to be quite high above the ground,
it suddenly moved, and I came to the conclusion that I was chasing an
insect, not a frog, so I gave up and made my way back to the comfort
of my bed (after a quick shower, of course). (Postscript: When I
checked through the photos the next day it became clear that I had
reached the ten-frog goal, possibly with one or two species to
spare.)
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