Below is an article written by Rick Gregory and also published on the wildasia website. Rick has kindly given us permission to use his article on our blog. For those of you planning trips around Kuala Lumpur you might want to checkout his website Nature Escapes.
Trekking the Dry Side of Perhentian Islands
Malaysian islands lure tourists into a sea of satisfaction, but RICK GREGORY wants advices travellers to mix a holiday of wet wonderment with a trek on the island’s dry interior.
The Perhentian Islands are undoubtedly one of Malaysia’s best destinations for frolicking in the underwater world and fry-panning it topside on its half-moon beaches. For chilling out, nothing is better. However, the forest-filled interior offers another adventure full of biological and ecological wonders.
In previous visits I managed to hike the poorly marked trails that cut across the big island to see flying foxes in blankets of folded wings asleep in the treetops. The best wildlife find though was finding a flying lemur in broad daylight. Plastered like putty high on a tree trunk, this cautious creature with big, brown eyes lunges and spread eagles in silent flight, its thin membrane stretching from fore and hind legs, and glides effortlessly down to an adjacent tree. Eerie in its exquisite escape technique, it is still one of my favourite jungle encounters.
My next visit was with Coral Cay Conservation (CCC) on their foray into the forests. Following the terrestrial team to the second research site, we lugged our backpacks, laden with box-shaped metallic mammal traps, across the beach, through a disused rice field and slowly climbed up the sloping hillsides arising from behind Flora Bay. After thirty minutes of jungle trekking we made camp in a flattened patch in a narrow ravine strewn with boulders and dominated by two large buttressed trees standing forty metres tall. It was quite a picturesque site and a real rainforest introduction for the British volunteers.
Led by project leaders Alexis Tamblyn and Rob Dray, the volunteers - Ruth, Suzie and Nazura - pitched in to tie green plastic hammocks to trees, assemble a protective tarp shelter and attend to cooking chores. After camp was complete, the CCC team selected three sites in the ravine path and one on the upper hill slopes to put up mist nets. These fine-threaded black nets, about 2.5 metres by 6 metres, are strung with ropes over tree branches and stretched across the flight pathway of birds and bats. “For bats we try to arrange the nets in a T, V or X shape to fake out their echo location,” Tamblyn explained.
In the sea, divers float over reefs and record whatever passes by. In the jungle one has to be more patient. Wildlife does not expose itself so readily in the forest. The only signs of jungle life were the grunted calls of dusky langur monkeys heard but not seen in the treetops and the acute sound of mosquitoes. Not even leeches were present.
We spent an hour scrambling over the dry rock bed searching for snakes, lizards, frogs and any other creature without any luck and was making our way back to the campsite when a call rang out, “We caught something!” Everyone ran up the hill to see the first catch of the long day - a white-rumped Shama (Copsychus malabaricus) flickered in the net. Rob Dray gingerly unfurled the bird from its stringed web and helped Alexis to take measurements while the volunteers recorded the data.
After the evening meal, each volunteer baited the boxy mammal traps with leftover spaghetti and bread and placed them at random locations nearby the camp. As the daylight descended, the waiting continued with talk of savoury food and wild animals. With headlamps and torches on, the team took turns to monitor the mist nets at half hour intervals. Then around 8:30 pm the camp became animated again.
Rushing up the forested slope, the team found five bats clinging to the invisible mist net as Alexis slipped on her thick gloves. For the next hour the researchers diligently went through their paces in the swelter and stillness of the night jungle - extracting and cradling these delicate but sharp-toothed specimens, identifying each species, measuring a series of body parts, writing data in field books, bagging each in plastic to weigh and finally releasing them.
The scientific haul was good. Three different bat species out of four captured animals (one escaped during the whirl of activity) were identified - False Vampire Bat (Megaderma spasma), Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus sp.) and the Roundleaf Bat (Hipposideros sp.).
The jungle offers a fascinating array of wild things, large and small, delicate and strong. And while some are extremely appreciated upon sight, others only petrify. Snakes probably lead the list of creepy forest dwellers with rats and scorpions making some quiver.
Even the hardiest of field researchers usually have a chink in their toughened exterior. And for terrestrial project leader Alexis, a woman with boundless passion for scientific discovery, there was still one creature she dreaded to meet. And the jungle had plenty of them. Her nemesis was as large as an outstretched hand, with a white bulbous body, long legs and eyes that glower back torch light.
“I’ve had a jaguar under my hammock, been shot at, and fallen into a cave with 20,000 bats, but nothing scares me more than a SPIDER WITH AN EGG SAC!” bellowed the arachnophobic Alexis.
Next time, hit the jungle trails. You never know what’s out there.
