Proboscis Monkey Blog

Saturday 18-03-2006

Shy Proboscis Monkeys

Spent this morning on the Menanggol River but it was cloudy and dark. Not ideal for photographing, so we started recording sounds again on our MD Walkman with a stereo studio microphone.  The quality is superb.  To go for this real unspoiled jungle music without tourists or boat engine noise we have to rent a boat for our own. We rent one twice a day for only 60 RM ( 15 us dollar).  Its for two hours but no problem if longer. Our captain is Samson. He does not speak English (as many Malay here), but he understands our wishes and surprised us, without asking he mounted a small extra silent motor engine on the boat. Slowly we glide stream upwards through the river in silence this is like a dream.  Ideal for our long shots stock footage in High Definition. 
In the distance we hear some Gibbons singing their morning song. Birds (mainly egrets) all over the place, pity Samson doesn’t know any names of birds except for the Hornbill. We see several kinds of them (will look them up afterwards). The colourful Rhino Hornbill is the most impressive and has many similar friends like the pied white hornbill. 

In our search for PM groups we went as far as we could get upon the river. The end is where there is too much hyacinth water-plants and fallen trees on the river. Right at the end (must be at 25 km) we saw a group of PM but the dominant leader was not amused by our presence. He soon moved in opposite direction with his harem. It seems that this far on the river the PM is more shy than their family at the beginning, those are more used to the boat sounds and noisy tourists. So we decided not to hunt them but float back on the slowly drifting river. It is like a dream, nothing but jungle sounds and some fish jumping above the water.

After coming back we heard that others have seen the big elephant group from yesterday (70-80) crossed the 100-150meter wide Kinabatangan River (with big currents) a view hundred meters further from our lodge.

You can’t have it all…

THE JAN PROBOSCIS MONKEY BLOG
is written now ‘LIVE’ in Borneo Malaysia
by Jan van der Meer
founder http://www.global-dvc.org/ and
Photographer and DVD-producer
of the Proboscis Monkey in Borneo
other info on Proboscis Monkey in Dutch and more
photographs and first edited videoclips at:
http://www.orang-belanda.hyves.nl/