Day 372: The ten-frog challenge

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.)

Day 371: Friendly fish and stripy snakes

After a late-ish breakfast at the café, we headed out on today's walk, taking the boardwalk through the mangroves (where it was low tide and the mud was crawling with hundreds of brightly coloured fiddler crabs, waving their single oversized claw at each other) then following the loop trail back the way we had come in yesterday afternoon before taking a side trail off to the left. Before we started the climb we passed through a boggy area where a group of frogs was calling excitedly. 

The trail took us through the same mix of vegetation as yesterday – a bit of rainforest, a bit of heathland – before we arrived at our destination: a builders-tea-coloured creek with a few deep pools in it and a few small waterfalls up- and downstream. We quickly stripped off and jumped into the cool water; the main pool was quite deep – at least a metre and a half – and was alive with some interesting-looking fish. 

Suitably refreshed, we climbed out and made and ate some lunch. Not long after, we were joined by two young Italian couples were returning from the end of the trail we had followed to get to the swimming area. They agreed with our decision not to continue on to the end – the tide was out a long way, the haze killed any views and the walk back up from the beach was pretty arduous. So instead, we just hung around by the creek and swam some more, chatting to the Italians.

By mid-afternoon we were ready to head back, hitting the shower as soon as we made it to the room. Sarah went out to give some apple cores to a bearded pig that was hanging around and was soon calling out that she had seen a snake. I ran out to see, but it had already disappeared into the undergrowth. On my way back to the room I spotted some movement that turned out to be another snake – a long, thin, striped colubrid. I quickly grabbed it by the tail, but when I picked it up, it thrashed around a little alarmingly, so I released it and watched it, too, disappear into the undergrowth. We all sat down on some seats on the walkway outside the room and the pigs came over to see us. One of them started chasing something in the grass and sure enough, it was another of the striped snakes. This time I managed to get into a position to take a few photos, although the snake was moving so quickly that few of them turned out.

After dinner at the café, we went out for another night walk, finding the usual assortment of frogs and geckos, as well as a small, brightly coloured snake.