Saffron-Bellied Frogs

The Saffron-bellied Frog - Chaperina fusca - is a tiny frog belonging to the family Microhylidae or Narrow-mouthed Frog. Although said to be quite common they are seldom seen; they usually inhabit forest and breed in rain-filled pools, where they congregate in numbers to mate.


Photo 1 - An adult frog on my finger. Photo 2 - The underside showing saffron-yellow spots

I first came across this species a few years back breeding in a well shaded small cement water tank in an oil palm plantation. As this tank is always filled with rain-water it is continuously occupied by these little frogs, and there are usually some tadpoles in the tank at any one time the whole year round. Mating activity is most active when it rains when the soft chirping songs of the males could be heard.

Photo 3 - A small colony of these frogs live in this cement tank (click on photo to see details). Photo 4 - Tadpoles

The adult frogs are only about 25mm (1-inch) in length, the male slightly smaller than the female. The back is dark greenish brown in colour, the limbs light brown to orange with dark brown bars, on the belly are saffron-orange spots on a darker background, strangely the yellow colour will rub off on to human fingers when handled. On each elbow and heel there is a flexible spine-like projection.

The Pigeon Orchid

Above: Buds about to open looking like little birds hanging upside down.
Below: A "string" of freshly open flowers.

The Pigeon Orchid, Dendrobium crumenatum, must be the commonest wild orchid on Borneo; it grows on trees on the edges of forest, in plantations, gardens, parks and even on roadside trees. However it usually grows unnoticed and ignored and is even sometimes treated as a weed by orchid growers! But every now and then all the Pigeon orchid in an area spontaneously burst into bloom of little white and very fragrant flowers, when every tree with a clump of this orchid are adorned with "necklaces" of what look like tiny white birds (hence its common name) and a strong perfume fills the air! Alas this only lasts a single day and by the next morning the flowers start to wilt and drop and the clumps of epiphytes are once again ignored.

A single flower with a moth attracted to it by the sweet scent.

It is believed that this mass flowering is triggered by a drop in temperature - flowers develope nine days after a drop of 5.5 ^oC or more, like when a sudden downpour occurs after a period of hot weather. However a recent study suggests that it is the water that washes away the inhibitary substance that initiates flowering rather than the change in temperature. The rain must be heavy and long enough, like 2 hours or more to be effective.

Dendrobium crumenatum has a wide distributional range: from China, Taiwan, Indochina, India and Sri Lanka to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.


Even a sickly looking plant can produce a few perfumed flowers!

Due to its infrequent flowering and short-lived bloom and lack of big showy flowers, the Pigeon Orchid is a neglected and under-rated orchid by gardeners. However I think each garden should have at least one plant as it is easy to grow and is totally maintenance-free, just stick a plantlet (called keiki in the business) on your mango (or whatever) tree and you can forget about it until one day when you notice that sweet smell coming from your garden!

Only In Sabah

Only in Sabah would you be able to see such a signboard! It's a notice to (foreign) harvesters in an oil palm plantation in their respective languages and of course English. It is also a sign of the times showing Malaysia's almost-total dependence on labour imported from her neighbours. Why? Borneans (and Malaysians in general) find these jobs too menial to do themselves... The languages represented here are Malay, English, Tagalog (Philippines) and Bugis (Sulawesi, Indonesia).

The Emerald Dove (Chalcophaps indica)

After the Spotted Dove or Tekukur this bird is perhaps the most common “ground” pigeon on Borneo. And with its emerald green irridescent feathers on its back and wings it is the handsomest too. It is featured on the current RM1 Malaysian postage stamp where it is labelled as "Green-winged Pigeon" a named prefered by many birders, though to me "Emerald Dove" sounds more elegant and befitting this gem of a bird.

Originally a bird of the rainforest and secondary jungle it is now also commonly found in plantations and farms, singly or in pairs on the ground busily looking for food which consist of small seeds, fallen fruits and reportedly, insects including ants and flies. Sometimes it is seen flying low at amazing speed expertly weaving in between trees like a green flying ball. However accidents do occur!

This bird pictured in my hand hit a wall and crashed to the ground dazed, but lucky for it, it soon recovered and could continue its flight but many years ago I had seen one killed outright when it crashed into a chicken wire fence!

Locals sometimes imprison these beautiful birds as pets feeding them rice and chicken feed.

The Malay name for this bird is punai tanah, in Kadazan/Dusun it is limbuken while the Hakkas call it ti kap 地鸽 (simply meaning ground pigeon).

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Donno, there was a car coming? Well forget the fowl joke, this is a post about wild chickens! And that chicken crossing the plantation road is actually a wild Red Jungle Fowl.

Until a few years ago when anyone in Borneo talk about wild fowls, they would most probably be talking about the various species of pheasants, patridges and megapods, not the Red Jungle Fowl (Gallus gallus) that is so similar to kampung or village chicken. That's because it is supposed to be naturally absent from Borneo, even though it is common from India, Indochina, Thailand, Sumatra, Java, Peninsular Malaysia and in the Philippines. Strangely it's left out of Borneo. (See map in this Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gallus_gallus_map.jpg)

However it is believed that somebody, maybe more than one or two people, imported (it's unclear when or how, eggs, chicks or adult birds?) some into Sabah, probably in Lahad Datu or more precisely the vast Felda oil palm plantations and they have now become firmly established in the East Coast of the state.

I first saw my first Gallus gallus around the year 2000 when a worker in the oil palm plantation where I worked snared a cock that had been "raiding" his ayam kampung hens. Later I met some in the fields and I would not have known that they were wild fowls if they had not flown straight up the palms when they saw me! No decent chickens could fly like that!

A flock of ayam hutan foraging in an oil palm plantation

Now, there are big flocks of them in the fields, mixed flocks of twenty or more males, hens and young chicks are not uncommon. So when you saw a chicken crossing the road, you no longer ask why it crossed the road, instead you ask, " Is that a wild chicken crossing the road?"

Glossary of Borneo-speak: ayam - chicken; hutan - forest, so ayam hutan is forest or wild chicken; kampung - village. Chickens are also called "manok" or "manuk" in many Bornean languages, and by Filipinos as well as Indons.

MV Doulos

As my visit on board the world's oldest sea-faring passenger ship cum floating bookshop counts as one of the special events of 2007, I just have to post this entry before the year is out!

I set foot on this grand old lady for the second time at Kota Kinabalu Port on 13th Oct 2007, the previous time was 20 years ago on 3oth August 1987 in Tawau!

Doulos was purchased in 1977 by Gute Bücher für Alle e.V. (Good Books for All), a private, non-profit, charitable organisation registered in Germany.

Over 20 million visitors have been welcomed on board for tours, programmes and visits to the floating book fair. With stops in over 500 ports of call, this unique ship has visited more than 100 countries in including Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and many island nations.

The ship's official website is:

http://www.mvdoulos.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

Close Encounter With a Python

It was in January, 1977. In the heyday of the golden crop, Cocoa, in a plantation right in the middle of the best cocoa land in the country - the Quion Hill Area of Tawau, Sabah. In this plantation only the best land was planted with the golden crop, while the so-called marginal soils were planted with a side crop - Oil Palm.

Well this post is not about crops, it's about a fatal encounter with a giant Bornean reptile, fortunately for the humans involved, it's fatal- but not to the humans!

Rajoo, a transplanted Tamil worker from Johor (Muar-mari) was taking his 5-year-old son to harvest his block of oil palm at the edge of the plantation with his faithful dog leading the way when all of a sudden he heard a loud sharp yelp from his dog who was just out of sight around a corner from him. His son was just a few yards behind the dog. When he reached the spot where the sound came from he was horrified to see his dog in the massive coils of a python with his child rooted to the ground in front of the gruesome spectacle. He quickly grabbed hold of his boy and ran back to the kongsi to alert the other workers.

By the time the workers arrive at the scene, the python had already swallowed half of the lifeless dog! With sticks and stones the workers made short work of the reptile which had spat out the unfortunate canine, and paraded their kill to the plantation office to show the Tuan (my boss)!

Fortunately I had a loaded (film, of course) camera with me and took a few photos for posterity!
I also took out a measuring tape and found that this monster python measured "only" 20 feet, short of the standing world record then! (The Guinness Book of World Record listed the longest snake ever found at 32.75 feet - a specimen shot in Sulawesi in 1912)

Note: Python reticulatus the Asiatic Reticulated Python is one of the two species of pythons found on Borneo. The other species is the much shorter and smaller Borneo Short-Tailed Python now recognised as a species in its own right: Python breitensteini.

[The pic shows Rajoo standing at the head of the snake, while the brave man pulling the (dead) snake's tail is Lawrence Kuloi the plantation's official hunter i.e. pests exterminator!]{click image to see full sized photo}

Chorus in the Rain

Click play button to watch and hear frog carol!

IT may be the season for Christmas carols but here there's definitely no silent nights! When it rains cats and dogs these little frogs gather together to sing their surprisingly loud chorus of groans and hongs.

When we were children we thought the sounds were made by monsters in the swamps, and adults warned us about playing in the rain! Now I wonder whether the adults then actually knew what made the ruckus, surely only few knew such loud noise could be made by such small frogs!

The musical wonders are actually squat little 2 to 2.5-inch (50-65mm) frogs with short legs commonly called Brown Bulfrogs (Kaloula baleata) that walk rather than jump. During dry weather they are quiet and secretive, hiding under dry leaves and plant debris and coming out to feed mostly on ants at night.

When calling they are a sight to behold as my short clip shows; the males inflate themelves grostequely while floating on the surface of temporary ponds. I took this video when there was a lull in the downpour with the help of a flashlight.

A champion singing male >

Fish Poo

YOU sunbathers out there! Don't get offended if I say you guys are lying on dung all day!

Well, I would not be wrong if you’re sunbathing on a soft white coral sand beach on a tropical island like Sipadan!

Photo: Lovely coral sand on Sipadan Island>

Marine scientists and divers had long known that coral sand are made by coral-eating fishes and are actually the excrement of these fishes! Of these the most important, therefore most prolific producers, are the 60 species or so of parrotfishes.

Parrotfishes, with their fused teeth that form beak-like mouths (thus making them look like parrots) feed on algae that grow on corals by biting chunks of coral and then grinding it before swallowing it. Their digestive systems extract the organic parts and excrete the rest as sand which get deposited in the reef and on the beach. As it is estimated that on a single reef they can produce tonnes of sand every year they are very important for coastal maintenance.

One species, the Bumped-head Parrotfish grows up to four feet in length and is said to use its bumped-head as a battling ram to smash up the coral before munching on the pieces. They feed in big schools and have huge appetites and when so many big fish eat so much coral that means a lot of sand. Arab fishermen know this so their name for this fish is “Abu Kharian”, meaning “father of shit”. Ahh, bless!

Looking at the beautiful fine grains one could hardly believe that each grain has gone in one end and out the other end of a fish! And how tons of it, virtually the whole of some islands, are produced in this seemingly revolting manner!

Being a non-diver, I have to rely on my diver friend to get photos of this underwater wonder. Unfortunately even though he had actually seen the sand coming out of the sandmaker many times, he had so far not been able to photograph this fascinating process! So I hope just this photo of swimming Bumped-head Parrotfish will do!

< This photo of bumped-head parrotfish was taken by S. M. Lo off Sipadan Island, Sabah.

This article by this blogger was first published in The Sand Paper - the quarterly newsletter of the International Sand Collectors Society. http://www.sandcollectors.org/SANDMAN/ISCSHomeIndexx.html

An Eurasian in Borneo

Believe it or not, the most abundant and visible birds today in our towns, villages and farms, in fact anywhere people live, are not native to Borneo. The Eurasian Tree Sparrow as it is recognised by birders the world over or Ciak Rumah or Pipit Rumah in Malay, is in fact a relatively new arrival in Borneo. I remembered that it was not included in the first edition of Bertram E. Smythies' Birds of Borneo book which I had often borrowed from my uncle as a boy, in fact as any respectable catapult-carrying kampung boy I would have known if there were sparrows living in people's houses then! I had listened enthralled to my dad telling us how he used to trapped "house sparrows" in pre-World War II Singapore!

I believe, it was in the early 1970s that I first set eyes on this species on Labuan Island, and it was much later that I saw a small flock near the port in Kota Kinabalu, from that time its spread was just phenomenal - until today there's hardly any corner of settled Borneo that it isn't found.

Passer montanus was originally native to temperate Europe and Asia but had spread to almost
all over the world including Australia and the US of A where it was said to have been introduced. In their original range Eurasian Tree Sparrows prefer rural areas and nest in trees and hedges while cities and towns are occupied by their relatives the House Sparrows. However in S E Asia where there are no native "house sparrows" they have taken on that role.

Ironically, while the immigrants to this region have continued to thrive and flourish, even to the extend of becoming pests in ricefields and in poultry and ducks farms (where they steal feeds meant for domestic fowls) their population in Europe had declined drastically and in the UK it had been classified as a Red List species, i.e. a species that's "globally threatened, whose population or range has declined rapidly in recent years, or that have declined histrorically and not shown a substantial recent recovery"!