Video update 2: Empty nest syndrome

It’s happened!

The baby hornbills have finally grown up enough to leave home. That didn’t take long!

Anuar wrote to us yesterday with the following exciting update:

“The last few days of activity began with the opening of the front nest sealing, sometime between 4 and 5:30pm, May 24. The female exited the nest at 5:40pm and left the area. The two young birds remained inside. Food was still brought by the male, but less of it and less frequently. The male often presented food, but would not pass it to the birds inside. The male brought clumps of dirt that were passed to the nest, the birds inside breaking up the dirt and letting it drop at the front of the nest.

The first young bird to leave the nest did so around 6pm, May 24. This was not captured, but video prior to this time shows two active young, and all video after this time shows only 1 young inside. The second young bird left at 9:01am May 27, and remained near the nesting jar for 6 minutes before wandering off to the left.

The male visited the nest 3 hours after that with food, only to find an empty nest.”

Awww! We feel very fortunate indeed to have caught this occurrence on video. It’s an unbelievably wondrous spectacle – great job Anuar! Check out the video he sent us: Continue reading

Video update 1: A jar of hornbills

Welcome to the first video footage posted by Rimba, which is just the first of many!

We won’t be uploading singular videos from the Kenyir Wildlife Corridor, as we’re in the midst of compiling them into a video montage highlighting the importance of the corridor and what needs to be done to save it (more on that in the near future).

Instead, we’re bringing you our latest video hot off the video-trap. This clip features an Oriental Pied Hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris) family consisting of Dad, Mom and kid (the loud chirping in the background is the kid). The dad goes out to fetch food for the mom and kid every day, both of whom are sealed within an earthen jar (locally known as ‘tempayan’ in Malay). Hornbills usually nest in tree hollows, but occasionally find ready-made homes such as clay jars to make their nests.

Our friend Anuar McAfee, who is a keen birder and the only person we know who has spotted 9 hornbill species in one day in Kenyir, introduced this location to us and we discussed the possibility of setting up a video-trap to document their behaviour. So we lent him a couple of Bushnell cameras (Thanks Ahimsa!) that were lying around the field house, and this is the report from Anuar so far: Continue reading

Project update 8: Two Wildlife Corridor Projects!

Hi Rimba friends, the Kenyir Wildlife Corridor Project finally has a new update to share with you!

What have we been up to? Well for a start, we’ve found ourselves a new research station in the town of Gerik (Perak). Why do we need one there? This is because Reuben and Ahimsa are teaming up to start a new project in another wildlife corridor, near the town. Many thanks to Steven for getting the field house operational – it was quite difficult because the entire town of Gerik had no water supply for a week due to a landslide that took out a water treatment plant! But things are almost back to normal and the field station is 95% operational.

Our ‘other’ field house in Taman Gerik
Jet, the official field house cat and Rimba’s unofficial mascot
Jet is very possessive when it comes to our computer keyboards

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sheema has been helping the team catalogue more than 130,000 camera-trap photos from Kenyir into a software known as Camera Base. Although the cataloguing is far from over, we can tell you at least 32 mammal species have been camera-trapped so far – this is similar to the number of mammals recorded from camera-trap surveys in Malaysia’s largest protected area, Taman Negara. And this corridor is only 1% of Taman Negara’s size!

So is this the end of our work in Kenyir?  Continue reading