Borneo Blog: Three Days at Mount Kinabalu National Park

I finally got to Borneo, after about 60 hours of travel, with one night on the plane, another in a Hong Kong hotel, and the third in the Kuala Lumpur LCCT airport terminal. I hit the ground running and have just finished my first 3 1/2 days of birding the highlands at Mount Kinabalu, a national park right on the main highway just a couple hours from the city. Walking the roads and trails each day, I covered bewteen 8 and 12 miles in search of the endemics. It weighs on me that I missed Whitehead's Trogon (they are on nests now, so it's the worst time of year to see them), but I also saw a lot and can't complain.

The photos below include: a view of the mountain as the day's cloud buildup burns off, just one of the scads of gorgeous moths at the lights of my hostel ($10/night, just a km walk from the national park), one of the many poorly maintained trails during one of the two solid afternoons of rain, a Little Pied Flycatcher, a pitcher plant (the pitcher is an extremely highly modified tip of an extension of the leaf), and  a tiny example one of the few orchids I've seen in bloom; Borneo, especially the highlands here, is ridiculously rich in orchid species.