My friends and I headed to Sabah after our stay at Taman Negara. We spent about 8 days in the the Mt. Kinabalu area. We stayed at the Kinabalu Pine Resort in Kundasang which turned out to be quite nice and well situated. From the resort, it was a short drive to the Kinabalu NP headquarters, about a 40 minute drive to Poring Hot Springs or about 1.5 hours out to the Rafflesia Centre. We alternated between these sites depending upon the local weather conditions.

Mt. Kinabalu is a scenic place. It is a big mountain so it was quite astounding to see how quickly some people are able to ascend to the summit. We only worked the area from the park headquarters to the trail head of the summit track. Some of the guys walked for a few hours on the Mempening, Liwagu and Silau-Silau tracks where they found a number of interesting birds. The best for me was a Fruithunter, a species that I missed on my first trip to southeast Asia in 1990.

Here are a few shots of the mountain.






The summit of the mountain was often enveloped with clouds.



We often drove to one of the higher lookouts in the morning and watched for birds. The upper forests were rather quiet. We found Indigo Flycatchers, Sunda Bush Warblers, Golden-naped Barbets, Sunda Laughing-Thrush, Sunda Treepies, Little Pied Flycatchers, Scarlet (Temmink's) Sunbirds, Mountain Leaf Warblers, Mountain Imperial Pigeons, Little Cuckoo Doves, various swifts and others.



... my birding friends: (L->R) Bruce, Bill and Ted.