Limosa - Birdwatching and Wildlife Hoildays Worldwide

The magnificent birdlife of Borneo, the world’s third largest island, parallels that of the bountiful Malay Peninsula, but includes numerous species that do not occur there - among them 30 or more endemics.

We begin our tour of this remarkable island amongst the oldest rainforests on earth. Kinabalu National Park is a World Heritage Site and boasts Asia’s highest mountain peak. Its maze of trails will lead us to a huge range of birds and the first of Borneo’s endemics. Major attractions of the Mount Kinabalu area include a number of elusive but sought-after avian gems such as Black-breasted Fruit-hunter, Whitehead’s Trogon and the glistening-green Whitehead’s Broadbill.

Also to be seen here are more than 700 species of orchid and 600 different ferns - many of them found nowhere else on earth. Amongst the most intriguing are the Nepenthes pitcher plants, with their intricate traps for insects, eight species of which are found within this amazing National Park.

Next, we fly across Borneo and travel to the delightful Borneo Rainforest Lodge, set deep in primary rainforest above a bend on the Danum River. The Danum Valley Conservation Area is one of the world’s finest lowland rainforests and boasts a huge species list. Gigantic trees, some towering upwards to eighty metres or more, create the tallest canopy of any rainforest. Here we will endeavour to find more of Borneo’s superb forest birds and the prospect of looking for such treats as the spectacular Rhinoceros Hornbill, Bornean Bristlehead, the aptly-named Pygmy White-eye and the furtive Bornean Wren-babbler can’t fail to guarantee an exciting stay. Danum is also probably the best place in the world to encounter a wild Orang-utan!

We travel back, stopping at some superb caves, complete with thousands of Edible-nest, Black-nest, Mossy-nest and Glossy Swiftlets as well as Wrinkle-lipped Bats. We stay until dusk to watch the bats emerge on their nightly forays over the forest - usually with Bat Hawks and Peregrines in attendance to pick them off.

Our last stop is a wonderful riverside lodge at Sukau, where we will explore the river and mangrove forest for elegant egrets, kingfishers, Oriental Darter and vividly coloured bee-eaters. This is a great spot for mammals, too!?And we have chances to find the extraordinary Proboscis Monkey - yet another of Borneo’s weird and wonderful endemic creatures - before concluding our tour with a morning on a lovely island, where the snorkelling can be superb and we could find Tabon Scrubfowl prior to taking our flight home.