Journey to Bodgaya

We left IBTP yesterday, about mid morning - late for an east coast destination. There were many stops: Indah Permai (for brunch), Telupid (another brunch - Telupid residents use free water from the hills), check Point (refuel only), Lahad Datu (to buy towels, as always, towels were left at home, just at the place you would have remember to put them into bags, and also to have a little bit of canai roti - I reckon Haruo Sensei speaks a little bit of Malay "Teh O kosong tanpa gula") and Semporna. To be exact, we went to Kalsom's family place.

Wanted to tell about the food we had at kalsom's. The order was done by Kalsom from a phone while driving out of Lahadatu.

Items for order includes:
Tehe tehe
Latok
Ba'at
... and several others.

We had them last night, mostly for the first time. Thanks, Som.

Hamid.

new members

I welcome Liew Thor Seng, May, Jan and Bunga. May is doing the taxonomic works on the climbing perch (Anabas testudineus). Jan and Bunga will work on the ecology of the Bornean wild cattle Bos javanicus lowii in the Maliau Basin - They will work outside of the basin because there is no tembadau in the basin. Both of them (now they are taking another friend with them) will go cattling in the third week of September.

Happy blogging!

Updates on giant reptiles

Dear wildlifers,

Ralf Sommerland (former Chair for Tomistoma Task Force SSC/CSG IUCN) sent us this website on giant crocodiles. I nice reading. Please follow link here http:/madrascrocbank.blogspot.com/.

This is interesting since all "giant crocs" that have been "seen" by people were dubbed as being more than 30 feet long. Paitan residents have seen even larger croc there - 100 feet!

So, how large does a croc get?

Camponotus gigas from Lanjak

Can you the bright yellow femur of this C. gigas from Lanjak Entimau? In many parts of Sabah and other places, femur of this species is normally dark brown.

Camponotus gigas from Lanjak

Dear all,

Camponotus gigas (the gigantic ants common in pristine forest) are different in Lanjak Entimau. They have bright yellow femur compared to the ones in Sabah.

New Specimens

Dear friends,
Petherine has just received 13 soecimens of wildlife (various species) from Wong Siew Te of Danum - who left for the us recently. they are either from roadkills of given to them in danum. The specimens are kept in a frezer in borneensis. We have a problem to identify which freezer to store them - most of them are full of dead animals.

If some of you would need to anything to them, please do and it is good if we will some space in the freezer for future specimens.

Specimens are legal and we have notified SWD for their arrival here.

Hamid.

Featured on BBC

Dear everyone,
just a quick post. There's an article being featured on BBC news at 10, BBC World and BBC 24 about Danum Valley (10th Dec). It was being aired in Malaysia BBC World Channel at 5pm last monday and a longer footage on afternoon news yesterday. Deforestation, logging, rainforests, canopies, global warming and climate change was the main discussion. There's a snippet of me being interviewed while working on top of the tree as well. :D
this is the link to the video Video.

and link to the article
Timber today or climate tomorrow.